by K. J. Emrick
He came and sat close by me on the bed to put his arm round my shoulder. “I was going to say you’re acting like somebody stole your dog, but whichever works for ya.”
It felt nice, having him this close, worrying for me, lending me his strength.
Why did I have to see Richard’s ghost today? Why?
“This is me, Dell,” James said. “Talk to me, won’t ya?”
I wanted to. Oh, I really wanted to. I wanted to spill it all out for him right there, but I knew that if I did he might run out of the Inn and never come back to me, ever. Keeping him in the dark was bad enough. Telling him all my little secrets would be worse.
Ghosts. I saw dead people, one of whom just happened to be my husband. I had this whole secret life that I kept locked away from everyone. Not a great way to build a relationship.
James deserved better.
So what did that mean for us?
After a moment, James leaned in close to whisper, “Do ya trust me, Dell?”
I nodded, and felt the tears starting again. A thick lump was forming up in my throat.
“If ya trust me,” he said, “then why won’t ya tell me what’s going on?”
Could he be any more perfect? I swallowed, and took a shaky breath, and made myself talk to him. “James. Please. I can’t... I just can’t tell you. Not yet. Not now. Please, can you... just give me some time?”
“Is it the murder charge? ‘Cause, I’m telling ya, there’s no way for Cutter to make that—”
“No, James. It’s something else.” Something worse, I almost added before biting down on my tongue.
“Something else?” he repeated.
I nodded.
“Something that ya can’t talk about?”
“Not yet. I just need a little more time.”
His blue eyes turned dark, and his expression hardened. “Sure, Dell. Fine.” I could hear the hurt in his voice. “Whenever ya fell like telling me what’s going on in that pretty head of yours, I’ll be ready to listen. I’m just the guy you’re dating, after all.”
Then he walked out, and closed the door behind him.
Well. Merry Christmas to me.
When that door closed I very nearly called for him to come back. Instead, I sat there in my room, silent and alone, and tried to get a handle on the whirlwind of my thoughts.
Chapter Six
Here’s the thing about ghosts.
They show up when they want to, and they tend to disappear when you actually need them around. I know there are people out there who can perform séances or use their Ouija boards or whatever and call up a ghost for the asking. I’m not one of those people. I can see the spirits, I can talk to them, but I don’t have them on speed dial.
I checked all over the Inn, inside and out, for Lachlan Halliburton. I whispered his name, hoping he’d pop out of the woodwork, literally, just like I’d seen my dead husband do. No luck. The hundred-year-old dead guy stayed silent, and scarce. Probably knew I was looking to wring his scrawny little neck.
Yes, I know that’s impossible, but the way I felt right now I was going to make it happen. Somehow. Even if he wasn’t imitating my husband—and I had to admit I was only trying to fool myself with that explanation—then I was still going to find him and give him a piece of my mind. Just to make me feel better. I needed someone to vent my frustrations on. Who better than a man who was already dead?
I was angry. Grief and confusion had given way to anger. I didn’t know what stage of grief I was in, and I didn’t care. I was just mad. I’d lost my husband years ago. There was no sense in grieving for him now.
And yet, here I was rapping my knuckles on walls and looking in linen closets for a ghost who didn’t want to be found because I needed a safe target who I could yell at.
After spending two hours in the wee hours of the morning looking for Lachlan, I found myself standing in front of that wall again. It was four-thirty in the morning, according to the clock on the wall. Full on dark showed through the windows in the commons room. I hadn’t slept much at all, just a few fitful minutes here and there, trying to avoid the dreams that were sure to dog me.
What better way to spend a sleepless night than by roaming around looking for a dead man?
The Inn was dark and quiet. Usually was this time of day. We’re not a rowdy vacation spot. The Pine Lake Inn is a nice place for nice folks to stay. With a few ghosts floating around the halls.
More and more all the time, seems like.
I stared at that wall for a long time. I’d already moved the portrait of David Collins aside, over in front of the fireplace. Had to turn him around, too, because I couldn’t take him watching me glare at a wall hoping for another glimpse of my husband’s face.
My hand felt along the paneling. It was solid under my palm, a little cold and rough, and the few lights I had on in the lobby reflected off it with a dull sheen. Nothing special about it.
Except, it did feel colder than anywhere else in the room.
“Richard?” I asked at long last, reaching out for him, trying to feel his presence, his spirit, his aura.
Whatever it was. Him. I just wanted him.
Could I do this? Could I sense when a ghost was nearby and maybe even call to them and ask them to come back to me—
A hand settled on my shoulder.
“Richard?”
I spun around to find Lachlan Halliburton’s smiling mug hovering in front of me.
Reflexively my hand swung out to slap that blocky face of his. I put all the force of my anger and mixed up emotions behind the swing, only to have my hand sweep right through him.
It made my fingers tingle.
The fact that I couldn’t actually touch him made me angrier. He stood there, smirking, in his same rough brown trousers and his suspenders, while I called him several very nasty names.
“Did you do this?” I demanded finally, my voice barely above a hiss. “Was that you in that wall?”
He looked where I was pointing, pushing back strands of his rust-colored hair from his eyes. Squinting at the wall, he shrugged. His expression was bland and uninterested. Not me, he was saying. Of course it wasn’t him. I knew that would be his answer. False hope... it was the only hope I’d had left.
Now even that was gone. Richard was dead. His spirit was here, at the Inn.
Lachlan was still watching me, and he was getting far too much pleasure out of seeing me so upset. I hated this man. I really did. He’d saved my life once, and that was the only reason he got to stay in the Inn. As long as he didn’t cause trouble. Or bother me.
Right now, he was really bothering me.
“Why don’t you go away?” I snapped at him. “Before I turn you into Mickey Mouse again.”
His face turned pale—well, paler—and just for a moment there was a flash of a long mouse nose and big floppy ear-circles. Then he turned away from me with a growl and his face was his own again.
There. Might not be able to slap the bugger but I can still make him suffer a bit. Lachlan’s talent for changing his appearance was something I had a little bit of control over. I don’t know why, but sometimes it came in handy.
Even if it’s just to make me feel better.
“Why are you still here?” I asked him. I didn’t mean here, now. I meant here at the Inn. “Shouldn’t ghosts move on to the afterlife or whatever?”
That stopped him in place, his cold and dark eyes staring through me while his expression slipped. He almost looked sad.
Then he turned sideways, and simply vanished.
I shook my head with a sigh. That was something I would never get used to. Jess did it to me, too. To just disappear like that... where did they go? Where were they when they weren’t hanging around me?
There were some things I figured I might never understand. It was a long list that kept getting longer.
The reason I’d asked Lachlan about moving on was because I needed to know, for Richard’s sake. Was there a reason he was here? Dead, but
not gone. There must be a reason. I was hoping that Lachlan could tell me something. Anything. Instead he left me empty handed. Answers were in short supply for me these days.
Because there were oh so many questions. They poured through my mind now like water. How had Richard died? When? Where was his body?
And the big question that I simply could not answer.
Why?
The wound in my heart was still fresh. For me, Richard’s death had just happened. At least, that’s how it felt. Yesterday, my ex-husband was alive and cheating on me somewhere with a platinum-blonde waif of a girl half my age. That’s how I always pictured Richard whenever I thought about him.
Then today, just like that, Richard was dead. It was like his death had never really happened until his ghost came to make it real. All this time, and I never knew... wait.
A death that didn’t really happen...
Now other thoughts started rolling and I couldn’t stop them. What was it James had said? About Officer Jason Bostwick. He said, it was like no one knew he was dead. The Coroner didn’t have the body. The Feds thought he was still alive on vacation somewhere. There was nothing at the scene of the crime to show anyone was killed there.
A death that never happened.
How was that possible?
I blinked, and tried to not think what I was thinking.
Someone had covered the murder up. Kept it local. I was suddenly standing in the middle of a cover up, the only suspect in a murder that—as far as the rest of the world knew—never really happened.
Who in Lakeshore could have managed something like that?
Only one person I could think of.
Cutter.
Oh, snap.
Of course it was Cutter. Everything that went wrong in Lakeshore had his fingerprints on it somewhere. If there was any kind of cover up of Bostwick’s death going on, it would have to come from the Senior Sergeant.
But if this was a cover up... why not just bury the body? Move it before anyone saw and bury it deep enough to never be found. Wouldn’t that have been easier? There was miles and miles of ground out there where bodies could disappear. We found that out last month when we stumbled on a site where bodies had been dumped for years.
Alfonse was still my best suspect for actually committing the murder. Bruce Kay was still a close second, but I had to believe if he’d killed Bostwick he wouldn’t have stuck around to clean up. He was a coward just like Cutter, and he would’ve turned tail and run soon as the deed was done.
Not Alfonse. He had his reputation to keep clean. Plus, he had to know that if a body was found in the rooms at his pub suspicion would automatically fall on him. So after he killed Bostwick, he called the police and let them do the hard work of cleaning up.
But... if Alfonse killed Bostwick, why would Cutter try to cover it up. More than that, why loop the Feddies out and still make an arrest on me...
Of course. To get back at me. Revenge, for making him look so bad in the papers and in the eyes of the people in town.
He couldn’t hope to keep it up, though. His cover up would fall through once more people realized Bostwick was dead. Even now James’s paper would be printing the story of how I was arrested for killing Bostwick. Just the mention of him in the paper would be enough to launch a full investigation. Federal officers swarming Lakeshore. News agencies from everywhere in Oz coming to get the story. That article was going to stir up a real hornet’s nest...
The sound of a loud thump behind me broke into my pleasant thoughts about how Senior Sergeant Cutter was going to be exposed for the dirty cop he was.
“G’day, Dell,” a cheerful voice greeted me. Young Jacey Brown. Up early, making his rounds to deliver copies of the Lakeshore Times. Australian schools were on their summer holiday, but even if there’d been school today Jacey would’ve been out getting the papers delivered before the bus came to pick up the kids for Geeveston Primary.
He’d dropped the stack of them down by the base of our Christmas tree, tied together with plastic string like they were a present from Santa.
My gift of seeing Cutter torn apart in print.
I checked the clock on the wall. I didn’t realize it had gotten this late already. Almost six o’clock. Rosie would be in to work soon. My guests would be moving around up in their rooms. Time for people to start waking up around town and getting to business, and here I stood staring at a wall and pondering the mysteries of life as we knew it here in Lakeshore.
I realized how sour my face must look when I saw Jacey’s eyes go wide. I managed a smile for him. “Thanks. Pay you on Friday like usual?”
“Too right,” he said, cutting the plastic bands that held our editions of the paper together in their bundle. “Can’t let ya forget that, now can I?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it. Tell you what.” I went over behind the registration desk and took out two ten dollar bills from the petty cash. I handed them to Jacey. “Here. Your Christmas bonus.”
I didn’t think it was possible for his eyes to get any wider, but they did. “Ah, Miss Powers, ya didn’t have to do that.”
“’Course not. That’s what makes it a gift. Go on now.”
He bobbed his head and tucked the money in the front pocket of his jeans. He couldn’t hide the smile, and it made my heart feel lighter to see him so happy from something so simple. Then he was off, outside where his bicycle was propped up and waiting for him, the cart attached to the back full of more newspapers to deliver. I liked Jacey. Hard working kid.
Now. Which page would the article be on? James’s article should be front page news. Me, arrested for murder by Lakeshore’s Senior Sergeant. Well, I could take a bit of egg on my face if it meant putting Cutter in his place...
I read the headline on the front page. It was a national story about politics up in Sydney. The single column story next to it was about a shark attack in New South Wales. When I checked below the fold, there was a headline about New Zealander criminals held in limbo on Christmas Island.
Fitting, considering it was just three days to Christmas, but not what I was looking for.
The rest of the paper took me two minutes to skim through. Lots of news, most of it trivial.
Not one word about the death of a Federal officer in Lakeshore.
I dropped the paper back down on the stack with the others.
There was no way James didn’t file that story. He was an amazing reporter, and an honest man besides, and even to save my feelings he wouldn’t have kept something like this out of the presses. The story had been buried. Squashed. As far as the rest of the world outside of Lakeshore was concerned, it had never happened.
Did Cutter have that kind of power, to keep a story like this out of the newspapers?
The ratbag had a lot of pull. But enough to do something like this?
He’d been using the department patrol car—the good one—to drive up to Hobart for special meetings a lot recently. I’d heard talk around town that he’d even been to Melbourne on a couple of occasions. He would have had to cross Bass Strait to do that so I suspect those meetings were super important. No one seemed to actually know what he was up to. If he was meeting with powerful people up there...politicians or worse... did I have more to fear from him than I realized?
I looked back toward the wall now, that wall where my ex-husband’s face had been. For the first time in years, I really wished that Richard was here with me. Someone strong, and smart, and brave, to help me figure out what to do. Richard had been all those things to me. I’d been his rock in return. I kept him grounded.
Until the day he decided to fly away.
“Oh, Richard,” I whispered. “What happened to you?”
That first Christmas after my husband’s disappearance, the pain of being abandoned still fresh in my mind, I remember crying under the Christmas tree in our house. I remember praying that he would just come back to me. Me, and our daughter, and Kevin our wonderful son...
My son. My wonderful son
the police officer.
Kevin was working for the Federal Police now. If I was going to figure this out, I couldn’t turn to the police here in town. I needed to contact someone from outside who would believe there was a cover up and a murder and that I was being framed. I needed someone who wouldn’t be cowed by whatever sort of pull Cutter had.
And I had my son. Mine and Richard’s son.
I stared again at the spot on the wall where I’d seen Richard’s face. It was like he’d given me the idea. He was the one I’d been thinking about, just now. Maybe... I don’t know.
Maybe this is why Richard came back to me now. Because he knew I needed him.
A little smile crept over my lips. Maybe I would get my husband back for Christmas after all.
That was something I’d have to think on later. For now I had more earthly matters to attend to. First, I needed to make a phone call.
Then I needed to go see a B-list celebrity.
***
Ordinarily, confronting a murder suspect is best left to the police. I know that full well. I wasn’t looking to get shot at. Again. Police were trained to deal with armed, angry people. Innkeepers were trained to run a business.
So instead of going by myself to see Alfonse Calico, number one on my admittedly very short suspect list, I should have called the police. I know that. There were just two things keeping me from calling up Lakeshore PD and telling them what I suspected.
One, Senior Sergeant Angus Cutter is a full on git. Think I’ve mentioned that once or twice.
Two, my son Kevin was about the only one I ever trusted in the whole entire police force here in my own hometown. Cutter’s dirty, and he’s trying to cover up this murder as it is. Can’t trust the lot of them. Sad fact, but there it is.
So what’s a girl to do except take matters into her own hands?
It didn’t take me long on a warm Saturday afternoon to figure out which house in town was Alfonse Calico’s. The man wasn’t exactly the picture of subtle. I’d heard he’d bought a place somewhere up near Beaker Street when he first moved to Lakeshore, but I never had any reason to go looking for it before.