Mrs. Morris and the Ghost of Christmas Past

by Traci Wilton

  “You moved from New York, right?”

  “Yeah, I should’ve stayed in Long Island—but when Vin gave David the chance to be part owner of his own restaurant, it was too good of a deal to pass up.”

  “That was supportive of you to move. I would have done the same for Jared. Gone anywhere in the world for him. We met at college, then ended up working in the same advertising agency. What about you? Where did you guys meet?”

  “He was managing an upscale steakhouse in the city,” Linda said, reminiscence in her voice. “It was my twenty-fifth birthday, and David was so handsome. He bought me a birthday drink and slipped his number to me on the cocktail napkin. Where did the time go? In two years, I’ll be fifty.”

  “So, you’ve known Vincent all that time?”

  “No, I didn’t get to know him until he sold his restaurants in New York and moved to Boston—he has a place there that serves American fare.”

  “In addition to Bella’s? That’s a lot of work.”

  “Restaurants are money pits—but David had a talent for bringing in repeat customers and making his places successful. He’s a people guy, can talk to anyone.”

  That didn’t jibe with what Vincent had told her. Maybe Vincent didn’t want to let Linda know the restaurant was in trouble. “The food is good, which also helps. Dad loves that pasta fagioli soup.”

  “So do I. I have the recipe, if you want it.”

  “That would be awesome. My dad would be thrilled.”

  “No problem. I hope Tori gets what she wants and leaves the rest of us alone. You know? I want this over with and to move on.”

  “I don’t blame you for that. I’ll be in touch soon—night!”

  Charlene put her phone in the cell phone holder on her dashboard. Who knew that Linda would end up being so nice?

  She drove home, her mind sorting through everything she’d learned today. She wished that it was just her and Jack, so they could discuss it all openly, but her house was nearly full.

  It was seven thirty when Charlene entered, laden with shopping bags from her retail therapy. The Garcias were out, and her parents were in the living room watching a Hallmark Christmas movie.

  “Hey!” She peeked in and waved at them.

  Her mom got up and her dad paused the film to ask, “How’d it go, sweetheart?”

  Charlene showed off the bags. “Success.”

  “Did you eat?” Her mom watched her warily.

  She smiled, letting the incident from earlier go—but not forgotten. “Nope. What did you guys have?”

  “Roast beef sandwiches,” she said. “Can I make you one? With some soup?”

  “That would be nice, Mom. I’ll go put these in my room. I bought stuff to fill the stockings and little gifts for Christmas morning.”

  Her mom smiled. “How fun!”

  Her dad followed them to the kitchen, getting out a can of soup from the pantry and a pan, while her mom pulled the sandwich makings from the fridge. Jack gave her a welcoming smile from the open door of her bedroom suite, then walked up behind her.

  “I was getting worried about you, because of the snow,” Jack said softly.

  She couldn’t answer Jack per se, so she said to her parents, “The roads were slick from the slushy snow that’s frozen over—I saw a lot of tow trucks pulling cars from the ditches.”

  “You are a very good driver,” her dad said. “I didn’t worry at all.”

  Her mom huffed as she lathered creamy horseradish on a slice of wheat bread. “Normally I would agree, but you don’t know these roads here like the ones in Chicago. It won’t hurt you to be cautious.”

  “It’s not her driving we need to worry about,” her dad insisted. “It’s those other idiots on the road.”

  “I like your dad,” Jack said, his image wavering at her doorway, “and yet I find myself agreeing with your mother.”

  Charlene arched her brow at Jack, her back to her parents. “Give me a second to put these away.” She hurried into her sitting room, shutting the door behind her, and put the bags on the love seat.

  “I wish I could help you wrap,” Jack said, eyeing the bags wistfully.

  “You do not,” Charlene laughed. She went into her bedroom to kick off her boots and exchange them for slippers. “I can’t wait to tell you everything I found out today. Do you know football teams, by any chance?”

  “Sure.”

  “College football, I mean.”

  “Not as well, but I love the sport.”

  “Think of teams with red and black colors. This jersey was predominately red.”

  He rubbed his jaw. “That narrows it down,” he joked.

  “Well, think back to David’s college years.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Fifty-three.”

  Jack leaned against the doorframe between her sitting room and bedroom as she sat on her bed and snugged her feet into warm argyle slippers with rubber soles.

  “So mideighties?”

  “We can search online later. After my soup and sandwich. I am glad I’m not meeting Kevin and Amy down at the beach for the yule log burning—brr!”

  “The bartender has a girlfriend?”

  “A long-lost love—I hope she doesn’t break his heart.”

  “I’m glad he isn’t hanging around you.”

  “Oh, Jack.” She stood and smoothed her jeans down her legs. “Do you think I need to tone up?”

  Jack burst out laughing. “What?”

  “Part of my evening was a stop at the gym, meeting with a very fit instructor.”

  “I think you look great.” He eyed her backside with approval, and she blushed.

  “I think Zane offers ‘extras’ to his personal clients.” She shivered with distaste as she recalled the rock-hard waxed thighs at her eye level.

  “Now that is a story.”

  A knock sounded on her door and her mom opened it to call, “Your dinner is ready.”

  Jack’s laughter rumbled behind her as she went out to eat.

  After her meal, which she ate in the kitchen with her parents, she brought out some of the lotions and manicure sets for Felicity House. “I’ll take these over in the morning when I pick up Avery.”

  “I was thinking,” her mom said, “that I could call around to some of the places and ask for donations over the phone. I used to be very good at that for the church fund-raisers.”

  “Would you, Mom? That would be a great help. I am sure that Pamela and Alice would appreciate that too.” She could give her the list of people she’d jotted down earlier, with the exception of Archie, who she wanted her parents to meet, since he was such a character.

  “Once I lay it on thick about dead David and the trampy wife who is stealing bread from the mouths of babes, I know people will give.”

  “Mom, you can’t say it like that.”

  Her mother’s mouth thinned. “It’s the truth.”

  “It might be slander—Dad, is that against the law?”

  “How would I know? I’m an art professor.”

  “Sam would know,” her mom said slyly. “Why don’t you call him? You could see how the investigation is coming along.”

  “Sam doesn’t like to talk to me about those kinds of things.”

  Her mom tensed, her large bosom heaving. “How do you know that?”

  Trapped. Charlene evaded the question. “Well, he just seems to be a stickler for the rules, that’s all.”

  “It might be worth a phone call,” her mom said, elbow on the table.

  “I am not calling to ask him if you can get sued for bad-talking Tori just to get a few bucks.”

  “For the children, Charlene,” her mom stressed. “It’s for the kids.”

  Her dad peered up from his tea and cookies. “It’s best sometimes to just let her do what she wants. She’s like a terrier—one of those yippy ones with sharp teeth that won’t let go of your pant leg.”

  “Michael Woodbridge,” her mom warned. “Neither of you apprecia
te me.”

  Charlene exchanged a look with her dad. Things were back to normal—as much as they could be.

  The Garcias returned at ten, their faces rosy from a day out in the snow.

  “We tried to stay up until midnight for the bonfire, but we couldn’t do it,” Andy said, Maddie draped over his shoulder, sound asleep. Emily leaned against her mom’s legs.

  Teresa waved and took off her gloves, urging Emily toward the stairs. “What a day—we’re going to sleep in tomorrow for sure.”

  “I hope you had fun?”

  “We did!” Emily perked up for a minute. “We saw snowmen and a giant log on fire.”

  “Did you go down to the beach?”

  Andy nodded. “People were singing and drinking hot cocoa—but it was time to get these girls home.”

  “There was music and everything,” Teresa said. “But it was too much at the end of a long day.”

  “Can I get you anything? I can put on the kettle if you want tea. . . .”

  “No, thank you,” Teresa said, following Andy and Maddie up the stairs. “We are going to sleep well tonight. Night, everyone.”

  Charlene and her parents returned to the living room. “On that note, I think I’m going to hit the sack myself. Good night. Love you guys.”

  Her parents resumed the Christmas movie they’d been watching, and Charlene hurried to her sitting room, closing and locking the door behind her.

  Jack appeared in a burst of cold, his form sharply delineated in jeans and a green Christmas sweater. He turned on the television for her with a flick of his fingers, creating a blue arc of power.

  “Show-off,” she whispered.

  His smile showed no lines around his eyes or mouth, his skin ghostly smooth.

  She brought her laptop to the love seat, logged on to her e-mail, and checked her website for messages. Two were asking if she had rooms available . . . she quickly e-mailed back for more information, wishing they’d left numbers.

  “So, what are we doing?” Jack sat next to her on her love seat and stretched his legs before him. Silva crawled out from under the armchair and jumped between her and Jack with an annoyed tail flick at Jack’s illusion of a body.

  “I’d like to know more about Freddy and David in college. Why would Freddy show up all of a sudden?”

  “Well, David had just won the lottery.”

  She shook her head. “So he arrived in Salem with his hand out? I don’t know. No offense, Jack, but David looked like he’d seen a ghost that night.”

  From his seat next to her, he deliberately faded in and out—full-color Jack to barely there, and back again. “Boo!”

  “Don’t waste your energy with tricks,” she said. “Flickering the lights or switching the TV on and off. I need you to help me find out what college David went to.”

  “All right, all right, but you don’t understand that I get bored without you.” He smiled with charm that made it impossible for her to be mad. “Did you check his social media pages? People sometimes fill out that information.”

  Charlene tapped her search bar. “I checked Facebook and Twitter.”

  “What about the business one?”

  “Oh—yeah, let’s check LinkedIn.” At the website, she typed in David’s name. The search was a bust. David hadn’t done more than a cursory profile ten years ago and then never updated it.

  Jack scratched his clean-shaven chin, his fingers not really touching his face. “Why don’t you search colleges with football teams in New York—do you know where he lived?”

  “No, which means that it was probably around the city—New Yorkers from there seem to think that’s the only place in New York—I noticed that in my ad days in Chicago.”

  “Good point,” Jack said. “David was just a few years older than me, so when I was in college—”

  “Did you play, Jack?”

  “No, no. And risk my doctor’s hands?”

  Charlene admired his large hands. “Really?”

  “No, while I loved the sport, I can’t run and catch at the same time. Thankfully I found that out when I was twelve, so I didn’t harbor any illusions.”

  Charlene sensed a story and faced Jack with a smile. “What happened, Jack?”

  “During practice, I tripped over a cone on the sideline, arms outstretched to catch the pass, and almost broke my nose—the good thing was that all the girls showered me with attention, making the bruises all worth it.”

  She could see it now—Jack already a ladies’ man before entering high school.

  “I’m sure you made it worth their while.”

  He gave a bashful, oh geez shrug. “So what else do you remember?”

  “The jersey had some kind of animal on it, outlined in blue. Snarling.”

  “A wolf?” he asked, leaning forward.

  “Maybe. I didn’t get that good of a look. Uh, today Linda said that she wished she hadn’t left Long Island. Does that help at all?”

  Jack snapped his fingers, though the movement didn’t make a sound or disturb the sleeping cat between them.

  “What?”

  “Check out Stony Brook. They had a decent football team.” He frowned. “But I don’t remember what division they were.”

  Charlene tapped “Stony Brook” into the blinking bar. The red and black colors of the school popped up, as did a cartoonish wolf’s head outlined in blue. “The Stony Brook sea wolves.”

  “Sea wolves—that’s right,” Jack said. “Can you do a search of their alumni?”

  Charlene navigated through the Stony Brook website and discovered David Baldwin, in 1986. Linda hadn’t been wrong—David was a hottie back in the day.

  “Played on the team,” she said. “Let’s check Freddy Ferguson.”

  Jack’s cold energy as he moved closer to see the laptop screen made her reach for an afghan and wrap it around her shoulders.

  “There he is—tall and skinny—smiling wide,” he said.

  She searched for a year of graduation—Freddy hadn’t graduated, it seemed. Curious now, she put in David’s name again.

  “Graduated 1988.” She scrolled down his achievements, but football hadn’t been listed after 1986. “Linda mentioned an accident, where David had gotten hurt, and claimed Freddy did it on purpose. David was definitely better looking. Maybe he was a better player too.”

  “Freddy was jealous?” Jack sat back.

  “Linda said David had been the quarterback, past tense.”

  “Can you find a newspaper article on the accident? I want to help. . . .”

  While Jack had a knack for moving things and playing with power sources, he wasn’t always able to be specific with his actions, like searching online for something in particular or turning the page on a book, which was why he enjoyed television so much.

  “You do help, just by talking this over with me.” Charlene Googled all Stony Brook articles around the time of the accident, but it was hard to zero in on the information she wanted. A half hour later she was about to call it a night when she found a single line relating to the incident and recited, “Quarterback David Baldwin injured in car accident, driver Freddy Ferguson suspended from play.”

  She closed the laptop and turned to Jack. “If Freddy had been out to injure David before because he was jealous, then maybe he showed up in Salem after David’s lottery win to finish the job.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Charlene didn’t want to think about David’s death anymore for the night. Jack, being perceptive, left her alone and went to wherever he went when he wasn’t with her. He had no name for it, but Charlene guessed that it was half in this world, half in another. It made her sad for him to be caught in the middle somewhere. She hoped with all her heart that Jared was at peace and in Heaven.

  She had her nightgown on and was ready to climb into bed, when her house phone rang. She used it for business purposes so quickly picked up.

  “Good evening. Thank you for calling ‘Charlene’s.’”

  “This i
s Gary Kramer. I e-mailed earlier to see if you had any available rooms?”

  “Yes, I’m sorry, but you didn’t leave a number for me to call back. We have three single rooms on the third floor. No elevator.”

  “Not a problem. Please hold one for me. I’ll drop by in the morning, if that’s all right?”

  “That’s perfect.” She grabbed a pad and a pen and wrote down his name. “I’ll make sure the room is ready. Just bring your things. Thank you, Mr. Kramer.”

  She clapped her hands with satisfaction and then slipped into bed after turning off the lights. When the house was quiet, she thought back on the day and wished she could tell Sam what she’d learned.

  If he was as agreeable about her interest in solving this case as Jack, they would get along much, much better. Maybe even go out on a date or two. What would they talk about? He wasn’t impressed with her insights, but people seemed to enjoy talking to her, and she learned things. She also noticed things that others didn’t and was a good judge of character. He shouldn’t blame her for that. She wasn’t nosy. She was involved.

  She punched her pillow and nestled in, finding sleep at last.

  The morning came with heavy showers. Rain pounded on the roof and hit her window pane. She stayed in bed an extra fifteen minutes just listening to the sound, not in a hurry to start her day. It wasn’t a weekend, so she didn’t have breakfast to serve. By now, her dad was probably up and had started the coffee. He was the kindest man in the world to put up with her mother all these years. Sainthood waited for him in Heaven. She smiled, thinking of him with angel wings still doting on his Brenda, the love of his life.

  The thought reminded her of Jared, but she didn’t want to think of him now, so she climbed out of bed and went in to shower.

  Refreshed and dressed in jeans and a long-sleeve red tee, she headed into the kitchen. Her parents sat at the table eating slices of Minnie’s applesauce cake and drinking their coffee.

  “Morning,” her mother said cheerfully. “Did the rain wake you up?”

  “It did.” She peered out the window, noticing most of the snow had washed away with the rain. “Looks like it’s letting up now.” She poured a cup of coffee and then walked over to the table, rubbing her dad’s shoulder as she passed.