by K. J. Emrick
From her own experiences with ghosts, she knew he was right. The universe must be standing on end, because she had just gotten good advice from Kyle.
Would wonders never cease?
“So let me ask you this,” Miranda said. “Could you grab hold of another living person?”
“I don’t think so. Just you.”
They were walking as they talked, the house back in sight again. “What if they were going to attack me? Could you grab someone if they were about to attack me and throw them around?”
“Maybe. I’m not sure.”
“Why not?”
“I’ve never tried.”
“Oh. Right. Well, let’s not put that to the test any time soon.”
“Agreed.”
Back inside the house, Miranda was about to close the door behind her when she heard hushed voices from just around the first corner in the hallway. At first she thought they were heading her way, but then she realized there were two people, just standing in the hall and talking. She supposed they wanted their privacy. If she’d closed the door up, they would have heard her.
Instead, she stood there, perfectly still, and listened.
Kyle kept asking her what the matter was, talking over the voices, until Miranda waved him to silence. She put a finger up against her lips, then pointed to the corner.
She saw the lightbulb go on for him, and he nodded vigorously, floating up the hallway as silent as a church mouse. Then he came back to her, and whispered, “It’s Leah and Ashton. They’re just right there, like two teenagers hiding in the halls of a school to sneak in a little snogging.”
Miranda glared at him.
“What? It’s exactly like that.”
Choosing to ignore him, Miranda listened to the hushed conversation between Leah and Ashton instead.
“I almost wish,” Leah was saying, “that I’d stayed for dinner to hear that Miranda woman had to say. There’s something about her I don’t like.”
“There’s something about every woman you don’t like,” Ashton pointed out. “We both skipped the dinner because we prefer each other’s company to that of your mother-in-law. She’s such a capricious old…”
“Hey, keep your voice down!” Leah hissed.
“Well, you know what Natasha is like,” Ashton returned in a loud whisper. “She’s so controlling that she even tries it on her guests. It’s not enough for her that she tugs at Paul’s strings like he was some kind of puppet. Although I daresay you’ve become rather masterful at that yourself, haven’t you?”
“I’ve no idea what you mean.” Leah sounded insulted. “At any rate my dear husband Paul could never stand up to anyone. His mother, or that Maisie woman either. Both of them have used him in their own way.”
“Then perhaps it’s time for your husband to stand up to dear old Natasha and be his own man, not her little boy. Paul is an amazing man, and no one seems to see it but me.”
“Well, he lets her do it, Ashton. He’s the one who’s happy enough to let his mother treat him like a child.” Leah’s tone had become entirely derogatory.
“It’s not Paul’s fault,” Ashton said defensively. “Natasha’s the one who runs this house with an iron fist. She won’t even let you make a single decision for yourself.”
“Yes, and if my dear husband Paul would simply stand up for me, then I might be able to act more like his wife, don’t you think?”
“Leah, your attitude towards Paul is atrocious!” Ashton said loudly, making Miranda jump. “Why do you talk about him like that?”
“Oh please!” Leah scoffed. “At least he has you to defend him, no matter what, huh?”
“That’s it!” Ashton said angrily. “I don’t know what you’re up to by hanging about with me, but I owe too much to Paul to listen to anyone speak like that about him. Especially not the woman who took him away from his first wife on the promise that she’d love him better!”
“Oh, don’t bother giving me your diatribe. I’m going. I swear sometimes, Ashton, that you love my husband more than I do.”
Miranda nearly choked. She had to cover the noise with her hands over her mouth, lest she be found out. If they found her here, listening in on them, what possible excuse could she offer?
As she stood there silently, she heard the sound of Ashton and Leah heading down the hall. “Kyle,” she whispered, “go and make sure the coast is clear.”
He zipped around the corner of the hall and then stood there, finally giving her a thumb’s up sign. “They’re gone. They went the other way.”
“All right. In that case let’s—”
Maisie’s ghost popped into sight right in front of Miranda. She found herself staring right into the woman’s translucent eyes, seeing her and seeing through her at the same time.
“I hate the way Leah talks about Paul.”
Miranda took a step back. Ghosts had this problem with understanding personal space. Apparently there wasn’t any such thing in the afterlife. “Did you hear all of that? Where were you?”
“In the walls,” was the ready answer. “It turns out I can sort of float through walls now. It’s not unpleasant.”
Kyle brightened and floated closer to Maisie. “Isn’t it the best?”
She seemed unconvinced about that. “Well. It allowed me to listen in on Leah and her hateful opinions, at any rate. I will never understand why Paul married her. Never, never, never.”
“You left him,” Kyle reminded her. “In fact, you rather screwed him over.”
“Oh. I um… yes. That’s true, I suppose.” She screwed her face up tightly as her memories came back to her. “Do you think Leah killed me?”
“Leah is top of my suspect list,” Miranda confided. “She doesn’t seem to like you very much.”
“She’s always hated me, ever since she got together with Paul. And now you’ve heard the way she talks about Paul. It’s like she wormed her way into his life, and pushed me away, without caring for him at all.”
“But why? I mean, apart from a bit of second wife jealousy, what do you think her problem is?” Kyle asked.
“I think it’s because she knows Paul still cares for me. He still likes me a lot,” Maisie said with smug confidence. “I was almost hoping… you know, when I came here for dinner? I was hoping that maybe we could talk and mend a few things. Maybe it could be our path back to each other, or the first few steps anyway. Elsewise I was just here as his friend and it kind of tore me up inside. I know he still cares for me. I know he does.”
“Are you sure about that?” Kyle said rather bluntly. “I mean, absolutely sure. Did he actually say this to you?”
“No, I could just tell,” Maisie insisted. “It’s not like he could just blurt it out with Leah watching over him like a hawk. Why? Don’t you believe it?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure.” Kyle said, and Miranda breathed a sigh of relief when she realized that his response could have been much worse. “The problem is, Maisie, that I think Paul Wells had more reason to kill you than anybody else. You heard the way Natasha ran you down at dinner. Did Paul stand up and defend you? No.”
“But he was in shock,” Maisie tried to say in Paul’s defense. “You saw him crying, too. He was devastated by my death.”
“True,” Kyle had to admit, “but that doesn’t mean he didn’t do it in the first place. If Natasha was putting that much pressure on him to be her darling little boy, and he thought you had to be removed from the picture to keep both his wife and his mother happy…”
He trailed off, and Miranda saw the lights go on in Maisie’s hazy, ghostly eyes. The blue light surrounding her darkened as this possibility took hold.
“No…” Maisie argued. “No, it wasn’t like that.”
“Maisie,” Miranda began gently. “You set him up, remember? You made the court and the world think he’d cheated on you and then you took him for as much money as you could. Seriously, people have killed for much less than that. I still think Leah is our best possibility, bu
t Kyle is right. We can’t rule Paul out.”
“Did everyone in my life hate me?” Maisie wailed. “How could there be so many people who wanted me dead?”
Miranda almost felt sorry for her. To wake up dead one day, and realize that you can’t single any one person out as the one who might have done it. How could anyone go on, after a realization like that?
“So then,” she asked Miranda, “you think it was Paul? Did my Paul do that?”
“I don’t know, Maisie. I really don’t know. It’s just that we have to consider the possibility.”
Maisie sighed heavily. “I don’t think I like being dead so much. In life I had friends, or so I thought. I had things to do, and things to think, and reasons to get up in the morning. Now… all of that is gone.”
“I understand that,” Kyle said, showing off by doing a full somersault backflip in the middle of the air. “But believe me, being on this side of death isn’t so bad. It can be pretty wonderful.”
She smiled at him and his antics. “What bothers me is not knowing who killed me. That burns a little, you know?”
That heavy thought weighed Kyle down, and he settled to the floor once again. “Yes. I was the same way.”
“We should get back,” Miranda told them both, knowing how the night was getting away from them. “No doubt Natasha will have desert ready by now. I don’t want her to send out a search party and have someone find me standing in the hallways talking to two people who aren’t really here.”
Kyle stuck his tongue out at her. Maisie watched him, wide eyed, and then turned and stuck her tongue out at Miranda as well. When she did she giggled, like it was the most delicious thing in the world.
“You’re right, Kyle. I haven’t felt this free in forever! Oh, don’t get me wrong I’m still terrified at being dead but when I was alive…” Maisie clasped her hands at her throat, looking at Kyle for his understanding. “When I was alive I felt trapped. I felt like I was living a part in someone else’s play. Like I had to act correctly, all the time. Even when I came here for that dinner I was playing a role. I never wanted to step foot in this house again! But I did it, to be a good friend to Paul, and out of respect to Natasha, and… and… now I would simply…!”
She stuck out her tongue again, adding a ridiculous face that made Miranda laugh out loud.
“Yeah!” Kyle cheered. “That’s the spirit!”
“Yes,” Maisie said as she peered dramatically down at herself, “I suppose I am.”
It was Kyle who laughed the hardest at that. “Well then, Miss Spirit, as I am a spirit guide, allow me to guide you back to the dining room.”
“Why sir,” Maisie chirped, hooking her arm through his, “I would be delighted.”
Miranda stared after them for a moment as they floated their way down the hall, chatting brightly with each other. Ghosts. She never would understand them.
The rare happy moment the three of them were sharing was cut abruptly short as it was shattered by a woman’s screams.
Chapter 12
Kyle and Maisie both floated ahead, taking shortcuts by floating straight through the walls, Maisie directing them which way to go. Miranda had to follow the old-fashioned way, following the turns of the hallways in the big house.
When she arrived at the entrance hall the doors to the dining room were open, and there was no one inside. She looked up and down the hall. It was just her, and Maisie, and Kyle.
“Wasn’t this where we heard the scream?” she asked them.
“It might not have been,” Maisie said, rubbing at her forehead in thought, an odd thing to see a ghost doing. “This house was always sort of a funnel for sound because of the way it was built. Something outside might sound like it’s inside. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I heard a door close upstairs only to find out it was down here instead.”
Miranda rested a hand on her hip, looking all around them. “So what do we do now? Obviously Natasha and Leah and Paul heard it, because they’ve gone off to find out what it was all about. Any chance you can find one of them? Or Ashton, even? He might have still been with Leah when the scream happened.”
“Oh my,” Maisie said, her hands flying up to her mouth. “You don’t suppose it was Natasha that screamed?”
“I don’t know,” Miranda had to admit. “It was definitely a woman’s scream so it had to be either her or Leah.”
Kyle floated up and down the hall, sticking his head through several walls. “We can look through the house faster than you, Miranda. Let us do our ghost thing. You stay here.”
“Wait, Kyle…” She was too late to stop them. They flew off together, up through the ceiling, heading for the second-floor rooms. She watched them go, helpless to do anything except stand right where she was, in the middle of a mystery that was getting bigger and bigger no matter how she tried to bring it down to a manageable size.
It had been her experience that where there was one murder, there could often be another. If that scream meant what she thought it did, then there was trouble of a very bad sort, and she needed to find out what it was before someone tried covering that up, too.
She knew, even with the weird acoustics that Maisie had pointed out, that whoever had screamed must be at this end of the house. They had just run from the back door all the way to here, and seen no one. Maybe, she thought, they were outside?
Starting up the hallway again, she had all of her senses stretched out to catch any little clue of what had happened. That was why she noticed what was missing from the middle of the hallway.
The cricket bat.
The plaque was still there, hanging on the wall just like it had been earlier, but the hooks were empty. Someone had taken the bat. Obviously, if it was signed by anyone famous in the sport’s history, it could be worth quite a bit. However, no one here really needed to steal something like that for the money. She suspected it was taken for another reason entirely.
Like, for instance, for use as a weapon?
One thing was for sure. This was not the happy family they wanted everyone to think they were. Miranda didn’t know them, other than the fact that they had money and a nice home and whenever they went into town they smiled politely and then ignored everyone. Never again would she assume that money made for happiness.
Look at her own aunt and uncle, for that matter. Not that they were gazillionaires or anything, but they had money. They had a nice home. Even so, Uncle Horatio had been so restless staying at Ragged Rest that he was now off galivanting around the globe, and her Aunt Connie had disappeared, never to be seen by anyone ever again.
Except for that odd little man, Josh Bates. He’d seen Aunt Connie, apparently. What his connection was to Miranda’s family was a whole other mystery that was going to bear looking into.
After she finished untangling the mysteries surrounding the Wells family, where secrets obviously ran deep.
As she continued to stare at the empty cricket bat display, Kyle’s face shoved right through the wall in front of her. “They aren’t upstairs.”
Miranda was getting better with his constant abrupt appearances. This time she was only jumped a little. “I didn’t think they would be. It was worth a try, I suppose. Where’s Maisie?”
“She went outside to see what might be going on out there.”
“Okay, good. Do you see how the cricket bat’s missing?”
“Hmm? What cricket bat?”
“Turn your… no, come out here with me… just step out. Yes. Okay.” Kyle stood there with her, finally facing the right way. “See there? It’s gone.”
“Oh, yeah. Look at that. I wonder if…” He made a motion with his hands as if he was swinging a bat as hard as he could, and then mimed being knocked over backward. “I’ll take Colonel Mustard in the Study with the Cricket Bat. You know?”
“Exactly.”
Maisie’s ghost came rushing down the hallway, floating a foot off the floor, waving her arms frantically. “Out here! Out here! Everyone’s outsid
e. Come quick, it’s horrible.”
Kyle raced Miranda down the hall. They followed Maisie to the front door, and then out onto the lawn.
As the two of them made their way out to the front of the house, they saw everyone standing, bunched together, not that far away from a shapeless form on the ground. It was dark but there was enough light through the windows and from the garden lights to make out exactly what they were seeing.
A body.
“Maisie?” Kyle asked her. “Who is it?”
“I know who it is,” Miranda said, even as Maisie shook her head, in disbelief apparently, unable to put words to what had happened.
Miranda had noticed Natasha Wells standing back a little way from the body, breathing harshly, her hands in their blue gloves held up to her face. Beside her was Paul. Next to him, tall and stoic, was Ashton.
If those three were here, and alive, then the body on the ground could only belong to one person.
Leah. Paul’s current wife lay dead there on the ground.
He fell to his knees next to his mother as Miranda was putting all that together, beating his fists on the ground. “Not again! No, not again!” he wailed in anguish.
Even though Miranda thought that was a bit over the top, she could feel his heartbreak from here.
Ashton stood over him, his arms folded and his face unreadable as he looked down at Leah’s body.
Miranda came over to stand between the body and everyone else. She knew that however this had happened, she couldn’t let the grieving family near the scene if they were going to preserve any of the evidence.
Although she was not completely convinced that all of them were grieving.
“Let’s just all stay back from her, okay?” Miranda suggested. “Are we sure she’s dead?”
“I checked for a pulse,” Natasha said, holding her hands up to imitate putting two fingers to Leah’s neck. “She doesn’t have one. If you look at her wounds… oh, my good gracious, it’s horrible.”
Miranda’s mind scrambled for details. She checked over the blue velvet gloves that Natasha was wearing. No blood that she could see, but with that material it would be hard to notice. Although, if she was the killer then those gloves would prevent her fingerprints from getting on the murder weapon as well.