Empaths and Paws

by Penny Brooke

  I nodded, then excused myself. I had a phone call to make. Maybe Fred could help me.

  “Hello?” He sounded a little drunk, even over the phone.

  “Fred?”

  “Fiona? That you?”

  “Sure is. I bet you never expected to hear from me again.”

  “Nope. A voice from the dead.”

  I rolled my eyes and wondered again whether I had lost my sanity somewhere along the way.

  “Fred, I’m in trouble. You’re the most sensible, hard-nosed person I know and maybe the only one to get me out of this sling.”

  “Sounds like you got trouble. What’s up?”

  I gave him a briefing, and, at the end, he said, “I’ll be over there tomorrow. Save me a room.”

  The guests were sleepy for the most part at breakfast. I knew they had a thousand questions, and frankly, so did I. “Good morning, everyone. I’m feeling pretty ragged after last night, as I’m sure most of you are. Going to have a light breakfast of fruit and muffins with coffee. If you’re still hungry, feel free to raid the kitchen. As for what happened last night, you know as much as I do. It was a bad storm, and the sheriff had other calls he had to answer, but I’m sure there will be uniforms in the house today. I’ve also called in a friend of mine. He’s someone I used to work for, and I trust him. He’s quite the detective, and I’m hoping he sees something the rest of us are missing. So, with that, I’m going upstairs to get organized for the day. It looks like the storm left us with a beautiful morning, and I encourage you to get out and walk in the sunshine before the day gets hot. Thank you all so much.”

  With my best shot at a common-sense speech now done, I made up my mind to rely on Gretchen and Sylvia to see to the running of the business as far as the house was concerned. Mortimer Antiques would just have to wait a few more days. I felt on the verge of losing my sanity entirely. I was shaken by the loss of confidence I felt from Peter. I knew, in his mind, he was trying very hard to believe I wasn’t involved, but the facts were straightforward. If he was suspicious, there were a lot of men at the state level who would be even more so. I got into my room and shut the door, but within moments, there was a tap, and it opened. Gretchen stuck her head around the doorway. “Boy, you sure know how to keep things exciting.”

  “Gretchen, stop. I don’t know any more about this than you do. I was sound asleep when Mrs. Smith started screaming.”

  “I feel for you, kid. After all, I bought a ticket on the same boat. Anything I can do?”

  “Just help me minimize the damage. If this keeps up, I’ll add us to the register of haunted houses, and our guests will become overnighters looking for a freaky experience.”

  “Not such a bad idea, if you ask me. Listen, I have a client to see. I won’t be gone long, maybe an hour at most.”

  I looked down, disappointed.

  “Hey, cheer up,” she said. “If these dead bodies shut us down, we may need my income.”

  I gave her a quick hug. “Be the best, but then you always are.”

  I was just coming down the stairs when the front door blew open, and there stood Fred. “Oh, my gosh, you don’t know how glad I am to see you!” I ran toward him and wrapped my arms around his broad chest. Okay, so there was a broad belly to go with it.

  He took my arms by the wrist and put them back at my sides. “No reason to get messy about this, Fiona.”

  I plopped the cigar from his mouth and pulled him out onto the front porch. “No smoking inside. Come over here and sit in the swing with me—there’s a big ashtray just waiting for you.”

  “Want me to get my luggage first?”

  “Your luggage?”

  “Yeah, and a few boxes. Got to say I was a little surprised at what my life totaled up to.”

  I turned to face him. “Fred, are you moving in?”

  “If you’ll have me. Gave a lot of thought to your move and decided maybe a change of scenery wasn’t such a bad thing.”

  I caught the glint in his eye at the plain words. “What a relief. You have no idea what it’s like to talk to someone with common sense. For the most part, everyone around here is nicer than they are smart, which is not a bad thing, but right now I need someone smart, like you.”

  “Here I am. Just like Superman. So, what gives?”

  “I have dead bodies coming out of my ears.”

  “I see. Wasn’t that the reason you left me in the first place?”

  “No, it’s not the same. Well, come to think of it, it is a little bit the same, but I need your help. So, I turned the place into a boarding house combination tearoom, and I’m about to open an antique shop.”

  He took a puff off his cigar and watched the smoke meander its way upward. “I’m trying to let that sink in. I thought you were coming for a simpler life…”

  “So did I. Unfortunately, simpler also equals poor and, well, something’s happened to shake my confidence.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Okay, so, Fred, there’s something I need to tell you about. I know you’re going to think I’m weird, or maybe nuts, and maybe I am.”

  “Is this where you tell me you’re a sensitive?”

  I sucked in my breath. “How did you know?”

  “You can’t be in the business as long as I have and not believe in things that you can’t touch. I’ve seen it in you from the beginning. My mother was a sensitive, if you must know. So, where do the bodies come in?”

  “I have this couple, the Smiths, who love this one little room at the front of the house. They thought they saw a rodent, but it turned out to be my aunt’s missing ferret —”

  “A ferret? You don’t have enough to worry about? Thievin’ little buggers is what they are.”

  “No one warned me about them. Anyway, the ferret disappeared sometime before I even got here and turned up in the Smiths’ bedroom. Mrs. Smith started screaming like nobody’s business, and I ended up eventually searching in the closet with another boarder, an electrician. Then I discovered a panel at the back of the closet. We managed to pop it off and out came the missing ferret and inside… well, inside we found a mummified body in a coffin.”

  Fred let out a muted curse.

  “That would be an understatement, Fred. I used to date the man who is sheriff now, and it didn’t end well. I left him to come find myself in the city, as they say. So, he might still have a little soft place for me because he helped me out with the state police who had to be called in, and they pretty much wrote the thing off to some weird occurrence in the past that I know nothing about. They came in and hauled out the mummy and I managed to keep my guests out of sight, so nothing was the worse for it… until two nights ago. The Smiths had temporarily moved across the hall but wanted their original room back. They have some sort of attachment to the view, I guess. A storm hit that night, and I was awakened by the most god-awful screaming you ever heard. It was Mrs. Smith. Apparently, the storm had awakened both of them, and they lay there talking. Then, one of them opened the closet door, and I guess they noticed the back panel. For whatever reason, they decided to pop the panel off and lo and behold there was another body.”

  Fred didn’t cuss this time, but his plumes of smoke had ceased, telling me he was deeply lost in thought. “And you have no idea how it got there?”

  “Would I have called you if I had?”

  “Maybe. You might’ve wanted bail.”

  “Be serious.”

  “I am. It’s a common ploy for the perpetrator to try just about anything to throw the track. You’re a smart cookie—you could think of things.”

  “As I said, I have nothing to do with this. I don’t know how the bodies are getting into my house, but I do know that I’m about to lose my business. Will you help me?”

  “How are your cinnamon rolls?”

  “The best in three states.”

  Fred tamped out his cigar on the ashtray. “Let’s have a look around.” For the first time, I was beginning to feel less burdened. If Fred Costell
o couldn’t work it out, no one could, and that included the state police.

  11

  Lessons in Looking

  Fred was a fish out of water in a small town. That much became obvious almost immediately. He disappeared sometime after lunch and was back less than an hour later. “Where does a guy go for a drink around here?” he demanded.

  I patted him on the shoulder. “There are bars down there, Fred. They just dress them up a little for the tourists.”

  “Probably jack up the prices, too.”

  I arched my eyebrows. “Naturally.”

  “You got anything in the house?”

  “Gretchen might have a half bottle of wine, but otherwise, no.”

  “That will have to change.”

  “You heading back to town?”

  “Nope. Goin’ to the beach.”

  “Might want your shorts, Fred. It’s a scorcher out there, and polyester will melt when you touch the hot sand.”

  His eyebrows rose, and then his mouth collapsed. “Cute.” The next minute, he was gone. I had to admit he was agile for being such a large man. I’d hoped he would give immediate attention to my dilemma. The state police hadn’t come yet, but it was just a matter of time before they were bearing down on me. I couldn’t figure out why they were even coming. The body was gone, supposedly down at the morgue. I’d cleaned up the room so the Smiths could reclaim it, and I had no more evidence or anything to say than I’d had the first time.

  It was about time I got more involved. After all, my entire life was at stake. I holed up with the computer and read some about mummies, including how to mummify a body. It was more than a little horrifying.

  It seemed that you laid the body out on a table and, using a hook through a hole you make in the side of the nose, you pull out the brains. Then you make a slit in the body and jerk out the intestines. I had to stop a second and take a breath at that juncture. Next, you let the organs dry and then put them inside canopic jars. They were a little like urns that had decorative heads on the covers. The idea was that the dead one would pass on to the next world where they’d need to re-assemble themself again, so the organs had to be well-preserved. Then came rinsing the inside of the body with wine and spices and then you’d salt down the corpse and let it be for a little more than two months. By the end of the first month, you’d stuff the carcass with linen or sand to fill it out, so it looked human. Then, after the curing time was up, you’d wrap the body in bandages, from head to toe, and plop it in a box.

  Now it wasn’t hard to imagine that all that tending took time and money, so not everyone had the luxury. It was similar in nature to the embalming we did in modern times. If anything, the sarcophagus was even more festive. But absolutely none of this explained how the mummies were getting into my wall—unseen.

  I knew the coroner suspected the Smiths were involved. Other than being in that room, there was no way they could have smuggled bodies upstairs, and then why would they scream and call attention to themselves? It just didn’t make sense.

  I’d returned to the room and stood in the doorway as Etta brushed past me, her fur dusting my leg. “I know, girl. These legs could use a razor, but right now, that’s the least of my worries.” She ignored me, but that wasn’t strange for a cat. She padded quietly to the closet, pushed the door open with a paw, and entered. Curious, I followed her and opened the door broadly. She’d curled up in the center of the closet floor and lay there, purring.

  Shrugging, I left the doors open for Etta and went back to the computer for more research time. There was no shortage of interesting information, but one thing, in particular, stopped me. The Egyptians, it seemed, worshipped cats. It was, in fact, illegal to kill one and carried a very harsh punishment. Their Cat Goddess was depicted as half female and half feline. That’s when I read the real shocker. Egyptians mummified their cats! There was more. Mummification was not solely an Egyptian practice. It could be found on most of the continents in the world. There went the only clue I thought might give us a sure thing. Or did it?

  I took a deep breath and let my mind follow a logical path. Was it possible that in the nether world, Etta had been treated as a queen, and somehow, she’d transported to my closet and brought back mummified slaves to tend to her? I gave a little breathless laugh, teasing myself for such foolishness. I, for one, knew there was life after death and that spirits could be trapped between worlds. I asked people to believe in my being a sensitive, but I wasn’t willing to believe in myself?

  It was food for thought, and I went back to my bedroom for a short nap. I had a feeling something was going to burst open around the house, and I was exhausted. Lizzie Borden curled up next to my bed, but Etta kept her throne in the closet.

  “Fiona? Pssst… Fiona?”

  I stiffened as I passed from sleep into the late afternoon of noises around me. It was Gretchen. “Hi. I guess I overslept.”

  “Just wanted to let you know I’m home and that Peter is downstairs and wants to talk to you.”

  “What time is it? I should be starting dinner.”

  “It’s just after four. Mrs. Markham and I already have chicken in the oven. Sweet potatoes, green beans, and I’m making a cold salad.”

  “Sounds good. You’ve got it handled?”

  “Always.”

  “Tell Peter I’m on my way.” I yawned and went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. I looked into the mirror and saw a vague image coming from behind me. It was a ship, lying on its side. As quickly as it came, it disappeared. I splashed more water and waited, but nothing came back.

  I took my time going downstairs, still stumbling a little from the heavy sleep of my nap. Peter was in the library with the others, watching television. His hand supported his chin, and I could see his eyes were heavy. He was fighting sleep. “Peter? Come on out to the back patio where we can talk.”

  He sat up, shaking his head to wake up. He followed me outside, but not before I grabbed two glasses of ice and a pitcher of lemonade. Thankfully, the backyard was empty of guests. We sat in the colorful Adirondacks clustered in the back of the lot under a massive willow tree. I poured and handed him a glass, which he instantly downed, so I refilled it and sat back to hear whatever was about to come.

  “The state boys aren’t coming.”

  I let out a captive breath. “Ooof! That’s a relief.”

  “Doesn’t mean they’re turning their backs on what’s been going on over here, but we had a wreck the night of the storm, and they’re busier over there. I can’t be specific, but it would be safe to say there have been some irregularities.”

  I nodded. “I see. So, what should I expect?”

  “I’ll let you know more when I can—if they tell me, that is. It seems that the local guy isn’t included in the insider conversations on this stuff. Ticks me off to a certain extent because I’m responsible for what goes on here, especially after they leave.” He wanted to vent, and I let him. In fact, it was the first honestly-Peter conversation we’d had since I came back. He’d always been polite, but monosyllabic when I asked questions. This was a welcomed change.

  I nodded and waited for him to go on. “Then, on the other hand, I’m not sure I want the responsibility of all that,” he continued. “We’re under-equipped and not privy to the federal information. It’s really a Coast Guard case, but… oh, heck, I shouldn’t be loading you down with all this.”

  “It’s okay. In fact, it’s a nice change to not be talking about mummies.”

  He gave me that hard look. “Oh, they’ll get around to you eventually. It’s just that, well, your victim isn’t going to change anytime soon. But they will get back to you, don’t think they won’t.”

  “Oh, goodie. Will you stay for dinner, Peter? I know the guests would like to get to know their sheriff and to tell you the truth, having a man of some authority might make them a bit less nervous about staying on.”

  “You know, I think I’d like that. Uh, you have a spare room where I might be
able to wash up?”

  “Sure, follow me up, and I’ll show you to one.”

  We were headed up the stairs when there came a pounding at the front door. No one in the library budged. “Peter, turn left at the top, and it’s the third room on the right. Make yourself comfortable. There are towels—”

  Bang, bang, bang! I frowned. “Keep your shirt on, I’m coming!” As soon as I said it, I was sorry. My temper was showing. I looked at Peter.

  He was grinning. “I wondered when the real Fiona would be showing up again. It’s about time, considering all you’ve been through. It’s okay, you go on ahead and get the door. I’ll find it.”

  I peeked through a sidelight first to see if it was the authorities. Instead, I saw a heavyset woman with dyed red hair and elaborately garish make-up. She wore a dress two sizes too small that featured large purple flowers.

  “Hello,” I greeted her as I opened the door. “May I help you?”

  “I’m Bernette Tyson, and you and I need to talk.” Her tone was bossy and take-charge. She sailed past me toward the dining room, where she took a seat at the head of the table. For my part, I offered neither coffee nor Danish. I didn’t want this woman to stay.

  “What can I do for you, Mrs. Tyson.”

  “It’s Miss Tyson, and it’s what I’ve come to do for you!”

  “Oh?”

  “You are to mind your own business and leave mine alone!”

  “Oh? I’m sorry, but what is your business?”

  Her chins rose as her nose and index finger pointed to the ceiling.

  I followed her eyes but saw nothing. “Something upstairs?”

  “Certainly not! I’m talking about the dearly departed.”

  “Ms. Tyson, I apologize, but it’s been years since I lived in Tempest. I’m not acquainted with you or what you do. Are you a minister?”

  “I’m a psychic medium!” she hooted with indignation. “I should think that would be obvious. I’ve been hired by your neighborhood association to get to the bottom of the hijinx in this house. It isn’t good for property values, and if you haven’t noticed, tourists are beginning to drive by and point!”