by K. J. Emrick
“You were down on the beach, Miss Wylder,” Paul began, his voice losing its earlier edge. “You saw poor Maisie there?”
Natasha Wells dropped her knife and fork into her plate with a clatter.
“Yes, I saw her,” Miranda said.
“Did she… did she suffer?”
Behind her, she could hear Kyle trying to get Maisie to come away, while Maisie refused to budge.
“I don’t know exactly how it happened,” Miranda decided to tell Paul. “I suppose, in time, we’ll know all the details, right?”
Paul stared at her blankly. For her part, Natasha very deliberately picked up both knife and fork, and began laying into her salad with a vengeance.
“I did suffer,” Maisie said, her head buried into Kyle’s shoulder. “And I’m suffering now!”
Miranda looked over their way quickly, as if a completely worldly noise had caught her attention. Maisie’s sobs had subsided, and now she was looking straight at Paul in an accusing way. That was the look of a woman who wanted to blame someone.
Could it be that Paul was the one who killed her, Miranda wondered? Surely, Maisie had thought so. That didn’t make it the truth, of course, especially since Maisie didn’t actually see who killed her. She’d only felt a hand laid on her in a familiar way and assumed it could have been Paul. The facts of the case remained to be seen.
“Mister Wells,” Miranda said, as much for Paul as for Maisie to hear. “I really am so very sorry for your loss. It’s clear that you cared for your ex-wife a great deal. I can’t imagine what you’re going through.”
Behind her, she heard Maisie whisper, “Thank you for that, Miranda.”
At the same time Paul said, “Thank you, Miss Wylder. The situation is… difficult, to say the least.”
His mother, on the other hand, heaved a great sigh. She went after her meal with a single-minded purpose usually reserved for one’s worst enemies.
Paul watched his mother’s antics for a few moments. “Is there something you’d like to say?”
“I just don’t see where this gets us, Paul.” She waved her fork at him. “All this sad talk about Maisie. You can’t act as if everything was wonderful between the two of you, because it wasn’t. She’s dead. That doesn’t suddenly make her a saint.”
“I know, Mother. I just wish I’d done something.”
“But how could you have done something, Mister Wells?” Miranda asked, curious at how he’d put that. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
“I should have gone out there last night. That’s what I could have done. I know what I saw, and I should have gone out there.”
Although Natasha Wells did not speak, Miranda caught the brief look of horror on the woman’s face. It was there and gone in an instant but it was obviously drawn out by Paul’s grief-stricken words.
Kyle cleared his throat. “Um, Miranda? He never told you what he saw. All you know is what he told Jack, and I’m beginning to believe that was a lie.”
Miranda realized he was right. She had to act like she didn’t know anything. “What did you see, Mister Wells?”
“I saw somebody push Maisie,” he said, turning his sad eyes on Miranda. “I know I acted all surprised yesterday but at the time I wasn’t sure and now that the police are involved and you’re talking about her death, it’s all become real. It’s like I can feel her right here in this room with us.”
“You can!” Maisie shouted at him, making Miranda flinch. “You can, Paul, I’m here!”
Miranda wasn’t sure whether Paul could really sense or feel Maisie or not. She figured it was possible for certain people to feel the energy of a passed loved one but usually grief kept people from feeling it. Those were just words that people said after someone died and they felt guilt at still being alive. She had to ignore that sort of probable false sentiment, and stick to the facts. “You saw somebody push her over the cliff? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No, not exactly. It was too dark for that,” he said, staring into space almost as if he was looking back through time into the previous evening. “But I saw her out there, and then she was gone, and I saw a shadow of someone else with her. It wasn’t until you came to the house and told us Maisie was dead that I put two and two together. I kept waiting for her to… come inside… perhaps join us in our game of cards… but she never did. She never did.”
His voice choked off. It was all he could do to say that much.
Maisie wailed, floating nearer the table while Kyle tried to hold her back, closer to the man she had once loved. “Paul, please. I’m right here!”
“He can’t see you,” Kyle reminded her. “The best we can do is watch, and listen.”
“It’s so hard, Kyle. See how he’s crying? Oh, I never thought he cared for me that much. Not after the divorce. I thought he tolerated me at best but now I know how much my being gone is hurting him. I thought perhaps it was him who killed me but there’s no way. I see that now with how torn up he is. It must have been someone else.”
Miranda wasn’t so sure, but what she heard Maisie saying made perfect sense. Paul was only just now pulling himself together, wiping the corners of his eyes with the edges of his cloth napkin.
“If you don’t mind my asking,” Miranda said, pushing her luck, “did you invite Maisie here to the old homestead often?”
Natasha shrugged. “Sometimes. She was part of the family for years, after all.”
“I suppose that made things a bit awkward with Paul’s current wife, didn’t it? With Leah, I mean?”
“Certainly,” Natasha agreed. “Leah is rather a hot-headed sort of a woman, but her heart’s in the right place. I have tried very hard to make her feel comfortable in our home. Sometimes she acts as though she owns the place, and I have to remind her it is still my house, but we get along. I can’t say the same for Leah and Maisie, though. Those two were cats and dogs to be sure!”
Miranda could certainly see that. Especially with how Leah had reacted so joyfully to the news of Maisie’s death. “How did Leah take Maisie being invited over last night?”
That elicited a very un-matronly snort from Natasha. “I suppose Leah would feel better if I had no relationship with my son’s first wife at all. I suppose that is only natural. However, and for the record, no one has said she was invited here last night.”
“I say it!” Maisie insisted. “I was invited. You know it’s true, Natasha. Why won’t you tell them?”
That was a good question, Miranda thought to herself. Who was Natasha protecting? “I must say, Mrs. Wells, your attitude does you credit.” Miranda took another forkful of the wonderful meal and chewed it thoughtfully. “Especially after Maisie and your son divorced.”
She wanted to ask straight out about what Maisie had said earlier about her setting Paul up in the prenup, and raking him over with the divorce, but that was something else she wasn’t supposed to know about. Only her abilities as a psychic had let her hear that, from Maisie’s own lips. Asking about the divorce sideways was the best she could do.
“It’s true, Miss Wylder,” Natasha said, “that Maisie Fraser did ruin my dear sweet boy financially. She staged a honey trap for him, and even though he didn’t do anything, her lies and a few choice photographs were enough to give Maisie solid grounds for invoking the parts of the prenup that made her rich. They went to court and she received a great deal of Paul’s personal wealth on a lie.”
“That’s not what she said to me yesterday!” Maisie said, taking an angry step forward. “She said I should come to dinner. She said I should reconcile with Paul and Leah. She wanted me to be here no later than seven o’clock, she said. Well, I got here and then…”
She trailed off, her memories obviously failing her again. She blinked at Kyle, and Miranda heard him murmuring softly to her that it would get better. She would remember more as they went along.
Miranda studied Natasha, confused at how she could claim to be such good friends with Maisie one second and th
en call her a liar and a cheat the next. Especially if she was the one who had invited Maisie here in the first place.
How many lies were stacked up in this family?
“Mother,” Paul said to her. “Please stop. This is neither the place, nor the time to discuss such things.”
“I suppose you’re right, dear. That’s all in the past now. Especially since Maisie has left us.”
“I’m not gone,” Maisie said, frustration making her voice tight. “I’m still here, and I suppose I will be until we know what happened to me.”
Kyle took her hand. “It’s all right, Maisie. Or at least, it will be. Miranda and I will help you cross over to the other side. Just wait and see.”
“Waiting’s all I can do, now,” she muttered.
A silence descended upon the room. Forks clinked against plates and bowls, and ice clinked in their glasses, and other than that there was only the sound of breathing from those in the room still living. Miranda racked her brain trying to come up with something to say that would get the conversation going back in the direction of Maisie and her death but she’d asked so many questions already as it was. She didn’t want to be thrown out for acting too suspicious.
However, the more the dinner dragged on with no one, not even Kyle and Maisie, saying a single word, the more Miranda realized that if she was going to go back to Jack with any real information then she was going to have to take matters into her own hands.
The pot roast really was delicious but before she was even half done with her plate she turned to Natasha Wells with what she hoped was an ingratiating smile. “Everything tastes so good, but I’m afraid I’m still not feeling well. I think it’s from being up so very late last night. I’m not used to that. Would you mind terribly if I went out back and took in the fresh air? I’d love to see the gardens, too.”
Paul waved his hand without even looking up from his plate. “Go ahead. Just be careful, and stay away from the cliffs. I don’t want anyone else to suffer the same fate as Maisie. I think I’ll put up a fence out there. Some sort of barrier to keep people away.”
Natasha frowned at her, scrutinizing her in a way that once again made Miranda believe the woman suspected her of something.
In the end, though, Natasha nodded her consent as well. “Just don’t be too long, Miss Wylder. Do hurry back. We’re having cherry cobbler for desert.”
Chapter 11
“Where are you going?” Maisie said, as she followed Miranda out of the room.
Miranda had to wait until they were out of earshot. Somewhere in the house were two other people also, Leah and Ashton, and she didn’t want to be caught by one of those two in a conversation she couldn’t explain. She worked her way toward the back of the house and found a door out into the back yard.
“I’m going to see where you died,” Miranda answered once they were outside. “I need to see it for myself.”
“But, Miranda,” Kyle argued, ever the pessimist. “The police have already been all over the scene. I heard Jack talking about it when he was interviewing Paul and the others. There was nothing there to see.”
“I know, but maybe there’s something they missed.” Miranda shrugged as she picked her way through a maze of rose bushes and petunias and hedge rows of short, spiky bushes. “After all, they didn’t have all the information that Jack and I have gotten hold of since then, now did they?”
“True, true,” he mused, floating along with Maisie. “Still. We know she was pushed from up here. We know she was killed. What else are you hoping to find out? Do you think maybe the murderer spray painted his name on one of these trees or something?”
That was a ludicrous idea, but now that he was pointing them out, Miranda saw that there were several stout trees all around the edge of the cliff, some of them growing out at an odd angle as they clutched the very end of the yard, where the soil grew thin and the rocks took over before dropping at a sheer slope to the rocks on the beach below. Between the trees and the bushes and the flowering plants, Natasha must spend a majority of her time out here tending to the garden.
“Do you remember anything,” Miranda asked Maisie, “now that you’re out here again?”
The woman’s ghost floated right near the edge. She stared out, her hands held forward, as if she was remembering the moment that she was shoved. She stood there, for a long time, and Kyle and Miranda waited for her to work through whatever she was feeling and experiencing.
“Here,” she said after another long moment. “It was right here that I was standing when I got… pushed.”
“Right here?” Miranda asked gently, standing in nearly the same spot. From here, she could see the drop. She could see how Maisie would have fallen in an arc to land right there on those rocks…
And she saw something else, too.
“Miranda,” Kyle said, “what is it?”
She turned around in a circle, facing back toward the Wells homestead. “Tell me what you see, Kyle. Or, more accurately, tell me what you don’t see?”
Kyle looked around with her, while Maisie still hovered over the cliff. He changed his position a couple of times, but in the end he just shook his head. “I don’t get it. What am I supposed to be looking for?”
“Where’s the house?”
Kyle stared at her like she’d lost her mind. “It’s right back there, Miranda. Through the trees.”
“Exactly. It’s through those trees. Can you see the place from here? I can’t.” It was true. The way the trees here all bunched together, with their thick bark and their drooping branches, she couldn’t see more than the barest glimpse of the roof, and a piece of the chimney. “So the question is this. If we can’t see the house from here, then it’s no wonder Paul didn’t see whoever pushed Maisie?”
“Ah. I see where you’re going with this. So Paul was telling the truth?”
“Maybe,” she said, second guessing her own logic.
It fit, and it made sense, so it was reasonable to think Paul was being honest about things thus far. Or, was he making it up? He could have been desperate to say he saw the murder happen because he was guilty over not being able to save Maisie, or to hide his own involvement in her death…
It certainly gave her more to think about. For now, she needed to get back to the dinner table before anyone suspected her real reason for wanting to take a walk through the gardens. Besides, it was getting awfully dark outside. “Okay, Kyle. I think you’re right about us not seeing anything else out here. Let’s get Maisie and get back inside.”
She turned to tell Maisie it was time to go, but the woman’s ghost was gone.
“Where’d she go?”
“Don’t look at me,” Kyle said. “She was here a second ago.”
They traded a look, and then Miranda carefully eased out to look over the edge, her toes sending cascades of dirt pouring down over the beach.
She saw Maisie then, down on the rocks below, kneeling near the spot where her body had been found. This was a lot for her to take in, and no doubt. It must be a terrible thing, Miranda reasoned, to be able to experience your own death in your memories—
The ground gave out under her foot and she pinwheeled her arms, trying to grab hold of a tree and missing, her weight pitching her forward into the empty space above the rocky beach beneath her.
Something caught her by the waist and pulled her back. In another gasp, she was on solid ground again, her heart roaring in her ears and her life flashing before her eyes. It was a good life. It would have been a shame for it to end right here and now, in the same way that Maisie Fraser’s had ended.
Taking a moment to calm her beating heart, Miranda looked up to see who it was that had saved her from death.
Kyle grinned at her, his face a mixture of relief and embarrassment. “Um,” he said. “Surprise?”
“Kyle! How did you do that? How long have you been able to grab hold of something bigger than a pencil?”
“Now, don’t be so hard on yourself,” Kyle said to h
er with a very serious nod. “You’re not that much bigger than a pencil. When I made all those comments about you being out of shape I was just kidding.”
“Kyle!” She was still staring at him open-mouthed. “That is not what I meant, and you know it.”
“I know, I know. It’s just difficult to explain. Technically I can’t grab hold of people. Most people. You and I have this stronger bond. I’m your spirit guide, after all, and that comes with a few perks.”
“Oh.” As she relaxed again, she thought that through. “I suppose that makes sense. It’s just that, well, you’ve changed since you were gone. You’re more real, if you’ll excuse the expression. The way you picked up that pen when you first got back, and the way I can hardly see through you at all anymore.”
“Well, I have gotten stronger during my time in the afterlife,” he beamed, flexing his spaghetti arms and puffing out his chest. “There’s an amazing cardio program over there. Jack Lalanne himself teaches a course and I have to tell you for a man his age he looks super fine.”
Leave it to Kyle to have a crush on the ghost of a man who had kept his good looks and physique right up until the moment of his death. “So you can take ahold of solid objects now?”
He shrugged. “More or less. Like I said, I could pull you back from certain death because of our bond. You were in danger. I stepped in like any good spirit guide would do. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“Oh, Kyle, I’m sorry,” she said, with another shaky breath. “I was so focused on your ghostly powers that I forgot to say it, didn’t I? Thank you. Seriously.”
“You’re welcome,” he said with a bow. “Now. Shall we go back to the house?”
“Yes. Um. What about Maisie?”
“As your guide in all things spiritual I advise leaving her there. For now. She’s trying to work through the reality of her death.” His face frowned. “I can tell you from personal experience that something like that is never easy.”