by K. J. Emrick
“My name is Miranda Wylder. This is Kyle Hunter, my good friend.”
“Okay. But what are you doing here? How do you know my name?” Her look of confusion deepened, and she began to back away from them.
“Maisie,” she urged, “do you remember anything from last night?”
“Last night?”
“Yes. What do you remember about being here last night?”
“I wasn’t here last night,” she said, shaking her head. “I only arrived a little while ago for dinner.”
“Oooh,” Kyle murmured. “That’s not good.”
Miranda saw what was happening. When Maisie had died, time had stood still for her. In her memories, this was still yesterday, and she was here for dinner.
But who had invited her?
According to the family, according to what they had told both her and Jack, they hadn’t seen Maisie in the house last night. They hadn’t expected her to be here. Except for Paul’s half-baked statement that he saw Maisie out in the back yard, no one had even admitted she had been here at all.
Why had they lied?
“I don’t know what you two are going on about,” Maisie said to both of them, indignantly, “but I’m going to go and get somebody. It’s not my home anymore or I’d just kick you out myself but I’m willing to bet Leah will have something to say about it. You’re obviously not invited guests.”
She took two steps forward, and floated straight through Miranda. She gasped, and stared, and then experimentally she put her hand out. It went right through Miranda’s chest.
Miranda squirmed. It was uncomfortable to feel the cold energy of that arm inside of her, but she kept a smile on her face. “I’m sorry, Maisie. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you this. You’re a ghost.”
“I’m a… what?” she exclaimed, fear creeping across her face. The reality of her situation was becoming clear. “I don’t believe you.”
“Maisie, you died last night,” Kyle said.
With a sudden burst of movement she pulled her arm out of Miranda and swung around to slap Kyle. The noise of it echoed in Miranda’s ears, even though she knew no one else would have even heard it.
Kyle staggered back from the blow, holding a hand to his cheek. Ghosts could touch ghosts. It was an odd rule of the universe.
She saw the look in her friend’s eyes. It must be odd for Kyle, she realized, living in a constant state of intangibility, not able to touch or be touched, and then suddenly to have a woman slap him across his face.
Did he hate it, she wondered, or did he want her to do it again so he could feel something?
“What the hell are you saying?” she demanded. “You… you’re different. You’re like me. You’re a… a… No. No, no, no! I can’t believe what you’re telling me. I didn’t die. I’d have known if I died, surely. And what did I die of? I’m only thirty-eight. Thirty-eight-year-olds don’t just drop dead for no reason.”
Kyle reached out to her, and took the hand that had just crashed across his face. “Maisie, I don’t think you did just drop dead. I’m sorry, but we think somebody killed you. Someone here in this house.”
“Somebody killed me?” Her eyes trembled as they searched Kyle’s face. “You mean, like, somebody actually murdered me? You’re crazy, that’s what you are!”
“Maisie, please think about it. How long have you been wandering these halls now? Where were you just before you came here?” She waited a moment, until she saw the truth finally sink all the way in. “Someone killed you, and now you’re trapped here. It’s why you haven’t crossed over to the afterlife.”
“So, I’m dead, but this isn’t… I’m trapped here? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Miranda had to explain things quickly. The last thing she needed was for a suspicious Natasha Wells to come looking for her and find her talking to herself.
“Maisie, I’m a psychic and a medium. Kyle is a ghost, like you. We’re here to help. I think we just need to get to the bottom of what happened to you so that you can move on. I know it’s a shock, Maisie, but I need you to trust me. Kyle and I are not new to this.”
“Oh,” was all Maisie said. She sagged suddenly under the weight of everything they were telling her, and sank several inches into the floor.
“Okay,” Miranda said, “can you tell us anything? What do you remember before this moment?”
“You know, I did feel a little bit funny. I wasn’t really sure how I got here. I was, um, outside? At the front door, I think. Wait… no. Natasha met me out front. She told me… I can’t remember.”
“Are you sure?” Miranda couldn’t help but hide her disappointment. Just once, she’d like to meet a ghost who could tell her the exact circumstances of their death, right down to who had killed them. “Natasha was at the door with you and then you came in the house?”
Maisie closed her eyes, trying to remember. “I don’t know. Maybe? I mean, why wouldn’t I come inside?”
“But you aren’t sure?”
“I don’t remember!” Maisie shouted, and Miranda was glad that the only one who could hear voices from beyond was her. “What is happening? What is happening to me!”
She twirled, spinning like she was going to faint, and Kyle stepped out to catch her in his arms. She calmed almost instantly. The comfort of another being touching her was just enough to bring her back to herself.
Maisie smiled up at him, while her hands felt along his arms. “You are different than her. Why can I touch you?”
“Because we’re both ghosts,” Kyle explained. “Remember? I’m like you.”
“Yes, I remember… Oh! I remember!” She stood up straighter, smoothing out the wrinkles of her ghostly clothing. “I went into the back yard. I used to love it back there and I wanted to take a walk through the gardens and the trees. Yes. Yes, I remember now!”
“Okay,” Miranda prompted, “but did you come into the house? Did anyone but Natasha see you?”
Maisie’s face screwed up in concentration again, and then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember that part at all. I remember being here. I remember being invited. Then I went out back.” She hunched her shoulders. “That’s all. The rest of it just isn’t there.”
“That will change,” Kyle promised her. “It will come back to you. It’s just going to take some time.”
“Was it the same for you? When you died, I mean?”
“Yes,” he promised. “Just exactly the same.”
“And you two are the only ones who can see me?”
“Yes,” Miranda answered, “it’s just the two of us.”
“So, the family can’t see me. I could walk right up to them this minute and they wouldn’t know I was there?”
“Yes.” Miranda needed to put this conversation back on track. “Maisie, do you remember anything else after you went out to the gardens?”
“I don’t… No, wait. I was at the far back, at the edge of the cliff, looking out over the water. I used to love this place because it was on the coast like this.” Her voice seemed a little dreamy as she tried desperately to recall the details. “I did hear somebody approaching. I recall that clearly. Oh, oh I remember now. I remember. I didn’t bother to turn around, I just thought that it was Paul coming out to join me, and then I felt a hand on my back…”
Miranda exchanged a glance with Kyle. He nodded, holding up a hand to caution her to wait.
Maisie’s last moments were coming back to her. Maisie Fraser looked afraid, and devastated. “There was a hand on my back. Just lightly at first, like Paul would do. And then suddenly I was being shoved forward. I can’t believe it. I was too shocked to do anything. I was falling. And then… and then…”
Maisie held her hands up to her mouth. Now she remembered. The moment of her death had come back to her and now she was reliving it in vivid detail.
“You didn’t see who it was?” Kyle asked, his voice almost tender. Clearly, he felt as sorry for Maisie Fraser as Miranda did.
&nb
sp; “I didn’t see who it was,” Maisie answered, “but I’ll bet it was Leah or Paul. I can’t believe it. One of them killed me!”
“Why Paul?” Miranda asked, feeling that time was working against her now. “If you and he divorced amicably then why would Paul kill you?”
“Because it wasn’t a good divorce,” Maisie explained, suddenly shamefaced. “It was all my fault. I set him up.”
“Set him up? How?” Miranda coaxed.
“I set him up so I could get a decent settlement from him in the divorce. Our prenup… I used it against him.” Maisie sighed. “But why would you help me? What do you get out of it?”
“Maisie, people don’t always help each other because there’s something in it for them.”
“Miss Wylder?”
The voice calling down the hallways had come from behind her. It was the shrill voice of Natasha Wells, looking for her.
“I have to go,” Miranda said, nodding at both of them. “Kyle, stay with her, see what else she can remember. Maybe bring her to Ragged Rest, or something.”
Then she ran as fast as she could back the way she’d come, hoping that Natasha was only calling her from the dining room and hadn’t come looking. As it turned out, she was in luck. She made it all the way back without encountering anyone.
“Thank you,” she said to her host. “I needed to freshen up a bit.”
“Indeed,” Natasha said with a disapproving sniff. “Well. Let’s begin dinner, then.”
She took her seat again at the table. She was out of breath from her sprint but trying to hide it, fiddling with her fork and her napkin, making a show of being happy to be here, when she noticed that Paul wasn’t looking at her at all. He was looking around the room.
“Mother,” he said to Natasha, “why isn’t Leah here?”
“Let’s just sit down, shall we?” Natasha said in a rush, as if she wanted to drop the whole subject.
Paul, for his part, did not want it dropped. “Answer me, please.”
“I beg your pardon?” Natasha said, her voice bearing the rather rigid tone of a mother scolding her child. It was out of place, when her child was a grown man and then some. When she saw Miranda watching she smoothed her tone out and started again. “Look, darling, we have a guest here tonight. Let’s just enjoy ourselves, hmm? Our chef has the most wonderful roast coming to the table, Miss Wylder. I forgot to ask if you have any food allergies, but I’m sure—”
“Leah should be here,” Paul insisted somewhat pettishly. “She won’t like it if we start without her. Did she make an excuse before she ran off, at least?”
“Well, Paul,” Natasha said, her eyes turning dark, “perhaps if you’d listened to me before you married her we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation!”
The table went quiet, the three of them looking at each other, and no one knowing what to say after that outburst.
Finally, Natasha brought over a silver serving tray from the sideboard with a ceramic tea set arranged just so, and took her seat near the head of the table where her son was sitting. “Tea, Miss Wylder?” she asked, as if nothing at all had happened.
“Um. Yes, please. Two sugars.” Miranda felt the silence growing around them, and she knew that the night would be over all too soon if someone didn’t do something to salvage it. That would mean she would lose her chance to get information from either of the two Wells’ still here. “I was admiring your home, Mrs. Wells. It’s so grand.”
That was as polite a way of putting it as she could think up. Eclectic would be her next choice, followed by gaudy and tacky, none of which she thought Natasha Wells would much appreciate.
“Oh, my, thank you dear,” the Wells matriarch beamed at her. “I do so enjoy it when visitors comment on my home. It’s taken us so long to get it to this current grandeur. A lot of our finances went into making this a home to be proud of.”
“I’ll bet it did. Um. Tell me, did you have most of the work done yourself?”
“Goodness me, yes. There have been many, many additions to this house but I’m happy to say that my departed husband and I finally made it a home worthy of our family. In its first incarnation, it was really rather tiny."
“Yes,” Miranda said as she accepted the cup of tea Natasha offered her. “I saw the paintings and photographs in the entryway.”
“Did you like those? Most of the paintings were done by my great, great grandfather. He was something of an artist. Quite good at capturing the essence of a place.”
Miranda couldn’t agree more, but the ‘essence’ she felt from those paintings was one of simplicity and humble living. What she felt from the looming house around her now was something far darker. She doubted that Natasha would appreciate that observation, however, so she sipped her tea and let her host continue.
“Well, the house is quite large enough now and I should not like to lose any more of the garden. After all, the larger the house gets, the smaller the garden gets.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Miranda said lightly. “There was one other painting out there that I noticed. One by Maisie Fraser?”
“Indeed,” Natasha grumbled. “I’ve asked my son to have that one removed but he’s quite insistent. Well. You know how men are. Often times you have to let them have one little thing so they don’t dig their heels in about the really important matters.”
Paul looked down at his hands, obediently accepting his mother’s evaluation of his manhood.
“I rather liked the painting,” Miranda lied. “Was Maisie artistically inclined, too?”
“She was an artist, all right,” Natasha sneered. “A con artist. Anyway, Miss Wylder, we’ll be serving momentarily, now that all of our distractions are over.”
She very pointedly looked at Miranda when she said it, effectively ending the thread of that conversation altogether.
“Are we waiting for Leah?” Miranda asked, switching gears. “Or Ashton Perry, perhaps?”
“My wife, it would seem, is not in the mood,” Paul snarked.
“And,” Natasha added quickly, before her son could say anything else, “I’m afraid Ashton turned down the offer of dinner. He’s here, of course, staying over for a few days. He simply took a plate of something up to his room earlier. Oh, well. His loss.”
“Really?” Miranda asked. “I hope he’s not sick.”
“No, he’s quite all right, my dear. I just think he’d had enough, with Maisie dying and the questions from your friend, Detective Travis. How long did you say you’d known him?”
Miranda took a sip of her tea so she could have a moment to get her story together. “Since I moved here, practically. He was one of the first people I met when I came to Moonlight Bay, all that time ago. Something certainly smells lovely,” she said, noticing the aromas wafting in from the kitchen. “You said you had a cook prepare the meal? Do you have a lot of staff here?”
“No. Oh my, no,” Natasha chuckled. “We haven’t the finances for that. We don’t retain the services of this chef, either. I simply hired him for the dinner tonight. He’s something of a friend of the family.”
Miranda put that into her mental file along with the other facts she knew about the Wells family. She was thinking there might be a list of servants to add to the suspect list, but apparently not.
In another moment, the food was wheeled out on a pushcart by a funny little man with a long and drooping mustache, wearing a white chef’s hat that drooped just as much. He wished them bon appétit, and then set the covered dishes on the table for them. The pot roast smelled wonderful when it was revealed, and a salad of mixed greens and tomatoes looked nearly as good.
“The dinner has vegetables straight from our garden, Miss Wylder,” Natasha explained. “I really cannot bear the watery taste of things that are grown by force out of season.”
“Oh yes, of course,” Miranda said, although she herself just picked up whatever was on the supermarket shelves with very little thought to its growing season, when she bought vegetables at
all.
“Oh!” Maisie’s voice came so suddenly that Miranda almost turned to look at her. “That is my absolute favorite. Natasha’s roast is the best. She has it seasoned with just a pinch of pink sea salt and basil and it is just divine.”
She and Kyle stood near the table, hovering close, but Kyle kept them back from everyone. “I’m afraid they’re not going to serve you up a plate, Maisie.”
Miranda glared at him, trying to communicate the obvious question without moving her lips.
“I couldn’t help it,” he told her. “She wanted to see what was happening in here. You try keeping someone who’s incorporeal from wafting about wherever she wants to.”
Fair point, Miranda had to admit.
“It was almost worth staying married to Paul,” Maisie went on, “just for Natasha’s pot roast recipe. I wish I could smell it. Why can’t I smell it?”
“You can’t smell anything, Maisie,” Kyle tried to gently explain. “Haven’t you noticed you can’t smell anything?”
“I can smell you,” she said, turning her big, round eyes on him.
“You… you smell me?” he stuttered. “Really?”
“Yes. You smell like spices and, well, a man.”
Miranda nearly gaped at that bit of information. She’d never had a reason to ask a ghost about their otherworldly senses. The look on Kyle’s face was absolutely comical as he puffed out his chest and enjoyed being ‘smelled’ by a woman as pretty as Maisie Fraser—even a dead one.
Without warning, Maisie almost threw herself across the dinner table in an attempt to hold Paul. She floated through him, and out the other side of the chair, and Paul simply lifted his head and wiped at his face as if he’d felt an insect or a stray breeze. When she stood up again, staring, there were ghostly tears in her eyes.
“This just gets worse and worse, doesn’t it?” Maisie disappeared only to reappear quite suddenly at Miranda’s side, looking down at her and trying to speak as she sobbed in earnest.
Miranda wanted with all her heart to look up at the woman and say something that would help but not with everyone here, certainly. Paul was starting to say something now, and she had to concentrate on him and leave the comforting of Maisie to Kyle.