by Angie Fox
Claymore glared as she passed us. “I should have worked faster,” she ground out.
“Justice is served,” Ellis said, slipping his hand into mine. I gave him a squeeze. It was good to see Nurse Claymore finally getting what she deserved.
“Slam dunk,” the ghost app chirped from Ellis’s pocket.
Frankie shimmered into existence next to me, cigarette smoke trailing out his nose. “Did I tell you I can’t stand that app?”
“You might have mentioned it,” I remarked innocently.
He took another drag. “I just have one question for you, miss detective.”
“Shoot,” I told him. That morning I could handle anything. Even Frankie.
The gangster cocked his head to the side. “What about Scalieri?”
24
Ah, yes. Scalieri, the gangster who’d asked us there in the first place.
The local police chief wanted to bounce a few things off Ellis, so I let them have at it while I led Frankie behind a gnarled magnolia bush.
“Here’s the deal,” I said to the gangster. “I’m going to help Scalieri, but not by breaking him out of prison.”
Incarcerated ghosts remained in prison until they truly changed, and it was obvious Scalieri needed more time. Besides, I wasn’t going to do anything illegal.
Frankie huffed. “It’s too late to spring him. They sent in extra guards this morning. They’re moving him out.”
“So we sort of did our job,” I said hopefully. We’d gotten Scalieri away from Mint Julep Manor.
Frankie stubbed his cigarette out. “I’ll tell him that when they’re fitting him for a new leg cuff.”
Darn it. “Okay, well, you know what? Even if we don’t get what we need from Scalieri, I’m still going to help him as best I can.”
“Oh no.” Frankie closed his eyes.
“I’m going to get his mamma’s silver box back to him.” Stealing it had started his life of crime. And more than that, the box clearly meant something to him. Maybe it connected him to his past and the possibility of a better life, one where he lived up to his mamma’s expectations and dreams for him.
“That’s not the deal,” Frankie said, enunciating every word. Like I was six.
“It’s what he needs.” Or it wouldn’t mean so much to him. “I’m giving it to him, and I don’t even care if he gives us anything back.”
“Of course you don’t,” Frankie said, dragging a hand over his face.
“Scalieri needs to get out of prison the right way—by becoming a better person. And a good first step will be to make things right with his mamma, to correct his original mistake and have the chance to try to start fresh.”
Everyone deserved that chance.
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” the gangster said. “I’m not going.”
“I’m bringing your urn,” I stated in no uncertain terms. It would be good for him to see—as many times as I could show him—what it looked like to do a selfless act.
“Shoot me,” he said, throwing his hands up. “Just shoot me now.”
I cocked a brow. “I would, but somebody beat me to it.”
He rolled his eyes, but I also saw how the corner of his mouth twitched up.
“Now come on,” I said. Time was wasting. And we had one final job to do.
I let Ellis know our plans, then set out with Frankie for a small farmhouse outside Jackson, the place where Scalieri had grown up. It had been a simple enough location to research, with my sister’s help.
It had taken no time at all for Melody to give me the address, along with a heads-up that Lucy was now the official mascot of the Sugarland Library Friday Morning Mystery Book Club.
She was a smart little skunk.
Lucy always knew how to handle her business. As for me? Well, I only hoped the farmhouse Scalieri mentioned was still there. If they’d paved it over or turned it into a mini-mall, we would be out of luck.
Shoot, even if we found the place, there was no guarantee that the box would still be buried under the old oak. Someone else could have dug up the box during the last ninety years. It could have rusted away. Did silver rust?
The tree that marked the spot could be dead and gone.
For all my bravado with Frankie earlier, I just didn’t know.
Melody’s directions led us out to the country, to the end of a long dirt road.
There we found the remains of an old farmhouse. Next to that, as Scalieri had promised, stood a thick oak tree.
I let out a breath and smiled at Frankie, who crossed his arms and did his best to appear put out.
As if he had somewhere else to be.
Still, he didn’t say another word as he trailed me out to the spot in the yard and watched as I dug deep down.
And there, I found the silver box.
I brushed the dirt away from the tarnished lid. It was in very good condition, and inside I did a little dance. “It’s here. And it’s beautiful!”
“It’s still not the deal,” Frankie cautioned. But I could tell he was impressed.
I lifted the lid and inspected the tattered blue lining. There was nothing inside. Scalieri had stolen his mother’s money the day he broke her heart, and burying the empty box was his eleven-year-old’s attempt to hide the evidence. I glanced at the falling-down farmhouse. “I wonder if Mamma’s still here.”
Frankie shrugged.
For once, he was right. That part wasn’t up to us.
This would have to be enough.
25
We returned to the asylum just in time to see the local mortal police bringing two covered bodies out on stretchers.
They loaded them into waiting ambulances, their lights flashing, their sirens silent.
I made my way over to Ellis and kissed him on the cheek.
“Did you find the box?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, opening my bag to show it to him. Now the only trick would be getting it to Scalieri.
“I’m surprised they’re moving Tom and Barbara so fast,” I said, unable to take my eyes off the scene playing out on the lawn. “Don’t they have an investigation to perform?”
“My thoughts exactly,” my boyfriend said. “Their deaths have been ruled accidental.”
“You’re kidding.” The local police needed to take a second look.
“They’re claiming the blow to Barbara’s head could have come from a fall.”
“She didn’t fall,” I countered. “She was sitting next to the generator when I found her.”
“They have no evidence of a human killer.”
“That’s because there wasn’t one. Claymore hit her on the back of the head,” I said. “Just like she hit me.” I’d had a monster of a headache the night before to prove it.
Ellis clenched his jaw. “Tom also showed evidence of trauma at the back of the head. But they ruled his death an accidental electrocution.”
“In the middle of a power failure,” I added.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “In this case, I’m not going to argue. We caught the killer.”
And Nurse Claymore would serve time until she changed. It could mean eternity.
“Doesn’t it bother you to see the authorities overlook so much?” I asked as a police officer walked Joan out.
“It does,” Ellis gritted out. “But it’s part of ghost hunting, isn’t it? We can’t explain what really happened in a way anyone would believe us.”
“We have no proof,” I agreed. At least not in the real world. That little quirk of ghost hunting had been a constant struggle for me, and I hadn’t figured out a way to make it better.
At least Ellis understood now. And if he could learn to live with it, that was even better.
There were a lot of things Ellis needed to accept about my ghost hunting if we had any hope of succeeding as a couple.
We’d talk about it. Soon. In fact, we had a lot of things to talk about.
I spotted Joan standing by herself and walked over to give
her a little hug. “How are you doing?”
“Terrible.” She sighed. “Tom and I had our problems, but I never thought it would end like this.”
“We’re so sorry for your loss,” I said.
She nodded gratefully.
“So what happens to the property now?” I asked as an officer locked the front door.
“I’m still going to buy it,” she vowed. “I’ll renovate it. Return it to its former glory. But not as a resort.” She looked up at the grand old building. “This will be a place of healing like it was originally intended to be. I’m going to make it a retreat center. I’ll restore the grounds. I’ll add flowers, maybe a memorial garden. I want to respect the ghosts who remain.”
“I like it,” I told her.
She eyed the place thoughtfully. “Are any of them staying?”
“Just Levi and Juliet on the third floor. They have rooms 300 and 302.”
“I’ll make sure to leave that space for them. And keep the third floor as a quiet area.”
“They’d appreciate that,” I said as the ambulance driver motioned to her. “You’ll want to keep the room with the books locked at all times. Levi has a valuable collection up there.”
“I will,” she promised.
I watched her go. This place would be in good hands. I could feel it. Joan’s brush with a real ghost seemed to have changed her. Or perhaps it was the loss of her husband. It seemed she would be the best caretaker for the property after all.
Shortly after Joan left, the ghostly doors to the asylum creaked open, and two guards accompanied a handcuffed Bruno Scalieri down the front stairs.
This was our chance.
I hurried over to the grim-faced trio.
“Stop,” I said, blocking their way at the bottom. I addressed the guard I’d met earlier. “I’m not done with this prisoner yet.”
“Sorry, lady,” he said, angling his prisoner around me and continuing on to a gray ghostly prison truck that stood parked out front—in the middle of my avocado green Cadillac! Well, that was fine because I wasn’t going anywhere until I talked to Scalieri.
I kept pace next to them. “I was promised the time I need with the prisoner,” I said, trying to reason with the guard who’d been kind to me before, a stout fellow with bushy eyebrows. “I’m allowed a second visit.”
“We’re on a schedule,” bushy eyebrows said, barely looking at me as they loaded a stone-faced Scalieri into the back of the van.
This wasn’t fair.
“We don’t have what Scalieri wants anyway,” Frankie hissed in my ear.
Maybe not, but I wasn’t giving up so easily. This was Frankie’s chance to learn what had happened the night he died. We’d come all this way. We’d braved the asylum. We’d fought off a murderous ghost. We had Scalieri right here, and we might not get that kind of opportunity again.
“Don’t you at least want to try?” I asked my ghost.
But Frankie stayed put.
The bushy-eyebrow guard closed the door on Scalieri, and on the answers we’d come to find.
He headed for the driver’s side of the truck.
I turned to the guard I’d met when we first arrived. “Inspector De Clercq promised me I’d have my time with Scalieri.”
“You did,” he said, drawing a clipboard from the back of his pants. “It says so right here.”
“I only met him once,” I insisted. “De Clercq said I could see him at least twice.”
And I would hold them to it. This was important. Vital.
The guard gave me a raised brow and checked the paperwork clipped behind his sign-in sheets.
Please let it be there.
Please.
Because De Clercq had gone to the light, and it wasn’t like I could find him now.
The guard frowned. He glanced up at me, then back at the paper, his frown deepening.
“Come on, Laskowitz.” Mr. Eyebrows leaned out of the driver’s side window and pounded a palm on the side of the police van. “Time’s a-wasting.”
“De Clercq left orders to give this Verity Long up to three visits,” Laskowitz said, holding up the clipboard.
“This would only be my second,” I stated primly. With any luck, I’d never need the third.
“Signed by De Clercq and the DA himself,” he added. The first guard looked at me in a new light. “What did you do for the old hardnose anyway?”
I shook my head. Smiled. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”
26
The guard turned the lock and opened the doors to the prison truck. Scalieri sat on a gray metal bench in the back, cuffed to the floor with chains on his hands and feet.
He looked up at us expectantly, and for the first time, I saw the man behind the gangster. I saw a glimpse of regret and the man who craved approval from his long-dead mamma.
Or maybe I was just imagining things.
“What do you want?” he asked, his voice raspy, his expectation almost palpable.
“To torture ourselves,” Frankie muttered, gliding next to me as I scrambled onto the trunk of my real-life car and hitched up into the ghostly truck. As the guard slammed the ghostly doors behind me, I took a seat on my car roof, which roughly lined up with the bench across from Scalieri. It was a little shorter than Scalieri, but then again, so was I.
“Frank,” I prodded. I rested my elbows on my knees as Frankie drew the ghostly version of the box out of my purse.
Scalieri stiffened. “Where did you find that?”
“Just where you said it would be,” I said, glancing at the closed truck door. “We’re alone. You don’t have to pretend you don’t want it.”
He snatched the box out of Frankie’s hand. “Did you see Mamma?”
“No,” I said gently. “But now that you have this, maybe you can.”
He could find a way to contact her, to start the conversation. This could be the beginning for him if he’d let it.
He turned the box over and over in his hands, inspecting every detail as if he couldn’t quite believe he had it back. “You didn’t need to go messing in my personal life.”
Why else did he even tell me about his personal life? “I hoped it would help you see that Frankie and I are on your side.”
“I would have broken you out,” Frankie said under his breath, “if Verity here hadn’t got us put on lockdown.”
“Hey—” I said. Just because it was true didn’t mean I appreciated the blame.
Scalieri ran his fingers over the box possessively. “Oh, I get it. You still think you can get information out of me when you didn’t hold up your side of the deal.”
“The box—” I began.
“Was not the deal,” he finished.
“Told you,” Frankie snapped.
Oh, for heaven’s sake. “The box was because I care.” Might as well be honest about it. “Yes, I want you to give us the information he needs about his past. Frankie needs to heal as well. But that’s not the only reason I helped you.”
Scalieri glared at me. “Then you’re a sucker.”
“Fine,” I conceded. Maybe I was a big fool, a hopeless Pollyanna, the butt of the joke.
I’d tried to do the right thing coming to this place, helping Frankie. I’d worked to do the right thing for Scalieri by keeping him in prison so he could change, by helping the ghosts in the asylum to be free to live their afterlives, by finding justice for those who were hurt by Nurse Claymore, by stopping her reign of terror and getting everyone what they needed.
Except for Frankie.
And me.
But I’d done the right thing and I refused to be sorry for it.
At the same time, I refused to believe this could be the end of the story. In fact, I was positive it wasn’t. This could be the first step for Scalieri, a way for him to start being the kind of man his mamma had wanted him to be. After all I’d done, it couldn’t end this way. “I’d like to make an appeal to your better nature,” I told Scalieri.
He huff
ed. “I don’t have one.”
I glanced to Frankie for help.
“I have to agree with him on that,” Frankie said.
“Well, heck.” I supposed there was nothing else to do.
I sat for a moment.
“Are we done here?” Scalieri prompted, pocketing the box.
“Yep,” Frankie said, moving to stand.
“No,” I said. But, truly, I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I was about to get up when a frigid breeze pricked the hair on the top of my head and chilled my left side to the bone.
I drew back as the image of a woman formed in front of the exit doors, a short, stout, barrel of a woman with piercing black eyes and stacked gray hair.
She clutched a shiny black handbag and glided straight toward Scalieri. For a second, I thought she was going to whack him with her purse. “So this is all you have to say?” she demanded in a heavy Italian accent.
Scalieri stared up at her, his mouth hanging open. “Mamma,” he croaked.
“I saw the girl dig up my box. I followed her. I saw her give it to you, and I thought eccoti, the boy has changed! He cares. He wants to do right, or he wouldn’t be thinking of his mamma anymore.”
“Look. I have it.” He drew the box from his jacket. “I’m going to fix things, Mamma,” he promised. “I have thirty-eight dollars in my pocket right now.”
She chuffed him playfully on the back of the head. “That’s a start, but that’s not what’s wrong. What about this lady who helped you? She wanted you to help her back, and you didn’t do it.”
“It wasn’t the deal,” he murmured, like a petulant child.
“You’re in her debt,” his mother said.
“That’s the way you can free yourself,” I reminded him, “by being a better man.”
“Don’t help me,” his mother said, taking a swipe at the back of my head. I ducked and felt the chilly breeze pass over me. “And put on a dress. I can see all the way to Rome with you wearing those shorts.”
“These are perfectly reasonable shorts. They’re from Old Navy,” I said primly.