I checked out the window, but I knew it wasn’t the shadow of a tree. I just didn’t have a clue what it was. “Yeah, I guess,” I lied. What was I supposed to say? Jack already thought I was crazy.
“They say Agnes likes to mess with people. Maybe she’s messing with you.”
He laughed, but I didn’t think it was all that funny. Instead, I thought he was onto something. I wouldn’t say I believed in ghosts, but since my parents passed, I wanted to believe in the possibility. Of course, I didn’t want to believe spirits were grounded to the earth because of something negative. I preferred to believe that if they were still with us, it was because they chose to be. “May I have a moment?”
“In here?”
I nodded. “Please? It might help me remember something. I just feel like I need to be here. Alone.” The feeling overwhelmed me, actually, but I didn’t want him to question my emotional state. I’d already appeared a bit on the crazy side.
He walked back to the door. “Take your time.”
After he closed the door, I sat in the chair in front of Bobby’s desk and waited. For what, I wasn’t sure, but I just knew something would happen. I felt it in my bones.
I tried to relax. I loosened my shoulders, dropped my arms over the sides of the chair, and shook my hands. I breathed in and out like I’d learned in yoga class, but nothing helped, so I just waited. When the hairs on my arms lifted, and goosebumps spread across them, and a swift burst of cold air surrounded me, I gripped the chair’s arms and held my breath, white knuckled and nervous.
Breathe, Chantilly. Just breathe.
A small warm breath of air touched my left ear, and the hairs on the back of my neck stiffened. “It was him,” a woman’s voice whispered.
I jerked in my seat. “Hello?” Shifting my head from side to side, I tried to stay calm, but it wasn’t easy. “Who are you? Agnes? Is that you? Who? Who was him? What does that even mean?” My lips quivered as I spoke. I was afraid, very afraid.
The chill in the room deepened even more, and even though every muscle in my body was tight and tense, I shook uncontrollably. Beads of sweat formed on my temples, but I didn’t dare move to wipe them. It took all of the strength I had to stay in that seat and not bolt out the door. “Is someone here with me? Please, do something Say something.” I squeezed my eyes shut and licked my lips.
A flash of cold air rushed past me, and I jumped out of my seat when a large binder flew off the desk and hit the wall behind me.
The door burst open. “What’s going on?” Jack rushed in and charged toward me. “What happened?”
My mouth hung open, but I couldn’t form the words. “I...uh, I...” I pointed to the binder lying on the floor. “That.”
He picked it up and placed it on the desk. “It’s a binder.”
I shook my head. “No, you don’t understand. It...I...It—” I swung my finger back and forth, pointing to where the binder was and where it ended up, all the while babbling like a toddler trying to find her words.
“Breathe, Chantilly.” His reassuring smile chipped away at my panic, and my heart rate dropped back to an almost normal speed.
I took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “It just...I don’t know. It just flew across the room and into the wall. Out of nowhere. I...I didn’t even touch it. I was sitting in the chair.”
He raised an eyebrow. “The binder just picked itself up and sailed across the room? On its own?”
It didn’t sound logical, but it happened. I saw it with my own eyes. “Yes, out of nowhere, it just flew across the room.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “You have a concussion. I shouldn’t have brought you here. It’s too much stress. You need to be resting.” He took me by the arm and led me out of the room.
I looked back in that short distance and saw a white cloud float down into the floor and disappear.
We didn’t say much as we drove back to my house. Jack asked me if I needed to see Doc Bramblett, but I shook my head. “I’m fine, but thank you.” I sat quietly for another moment, but I couldn’t take it anymore, and I had to say something. “I know you don’t believe me, but the binder really did fly across the room.”
He glanced at me, but only for a moment, and then his eyes went straight back to the road. “I don’t not believe you, Chantilly. I just don’t know how a binder can fling itself across a room like that.”
It didn’t fling itself. Someone flung it. “What if it was Agnes Hamilton?”
He blinked and shook his head. “A ghost? You think a ghost picked up the binder and tossed it at you? Come on, that’s kind of out there, don’t you think?”
“I don’t think she was trying to hit me.”
“Agnes Hamilton is long dead. Even if I did believe her ghost was hanging around Hamilton House, I’d be hard pressed to believe she threw a binder across the room.”
“I would have said the same thing, but now I’m not so sure.”
We arrived at my house, and Jack turned off the car and held onto the steering wheel for a moment before getting out. He walked me to my door. “Can you call someone? Have them sit with you until Austin’s home? I’m not sure you should be alone.”
“I’m fine, I promise. I have to get him in a bit anyway.”
“No, you shouldn’t be driving. I really think you need to go to see Doc. He could run some tests or something. I think the concussion is worse than he thought.”
I probably wouldn’t have believed me either, but it didn’t matter. I knew what happened was real.
I just didn’t know what it meant.
Jack refused to let me pick up Austin from practice, and after ten minutes of attempting to convince him I was fine, I finally gave in and let him drive me to the field.
Jack talked with the team and the assistant coach while I walked around the small track that outlined the playing fields. I worked to mentally piece together the puzzle of situations I’d recently experienced. Was that Agnes Hamilton? Did she whisper in my ear? And what did it’s him mean? Was she referring to Bobby? She couldn’t have been, could she? Was she trying to give me a message about him? Did he kill himself like she’d done? He’d have to have been pretty darn flexible to do that, and though I hadn’t spent much time with Bobby Pruitt ever, I would bet my lifesavings the man wasn’t flexible enough to contort that way.
What did it all mean then? The knife. The letter. Yes, the letter. I was certain I’d seen a piece of paper drop to the ground, yet Jack said there wasn’t one. Everything was blurry and hazy, but something inside me told me it was a letter, not just a piece of paper. A letter the police didn’t find anywhere in the office.
What did it all mean?
I caught up to Jack and Austin on the way to the car, and Austin didn’t even flinch when we got to Jack’s and not mine. He acted like it was the most natural thing to do. I wished I had his bounce back ability, or naïvety, whichever it was. “Can we stop for food? I’m starving.”
Jack wrapped his arm around Austin’s shoulders. “Sure buddy, I could use a bite, too. How’s pizza sound?”
I grimaced. “It’s a school night, and besides, you really want to take this kid out in public with the way he smells?”
Austin sniffed his armpits, and I gagged just at the thought of that. “I smell fine.”
Jack laughed. “I wouldn’t go that far, but I don’t think you’ll clear out a pizza joint.”
“I wouldn’t put it past him, and besides, I’m sure you’ve got homework, right, Austin?”
“Come on, Mom, it’s just one night. I can get my homework done when I get home.”
“Yeah, it’s just one night, Mom,” Jack said, a smile stretched across his face. “I think I’ve got some air freshener in my trunk. I can spray it on him, and he’ll be good as new.”
Austin’s words echoed his lacrosse coach’s. “Yeah, good as new.”
I sighed. The fact that earlier Jack thought I’d needed to go home and rest didn’t even come up, but at least he
’d stopped suggesting I go back to see Doc Bramblett. “Fine, but no dilly-dallying. We eat and we leave. That’s it. You hear me?”
Jack saluted me, and Austin copied him, and I knew then he had a fan, and I’d never win an argument when he was around again. His phone rang as we parked in the lot of Pizzaso’s Pizza Parlor. He checked the screen and silenced it.
“If you need to get that we can get a table.”
“It’s not important.”
I wondered if the person on the other end of the line agreed.
We ordered our pizza and Austin filled us in on practice.
“Then Coach Tom had us running sprints.” He slurped his soda up through the straw. “At the end of practice. How stupid is that?”
“Austin, don’t call your coach stupid. That’s disrespectful,” I said.
“Well, it was.”
Jack smirked. “I get it. You’re tired, and the last thing you wanted to do was run, but there’s a method to that madness.”
“Like what, torture?” Austin asked.
“Exactly,” Jack said. “It’s our goal to send you home exhausted and beaten down so you don’t give your momma a hard time.”
I laughed. “I appreciate the effort, but I don’t think it’s working.”
“Nana says I’m an angel.” Austin frowned. “Well, that’s what she used to say.”
I covered the top of his hand with mine, and with a serious tone, said, “That’s because she didn’t live with you.”
Jack laughed. “He’s a pretty good kid most of the time.”
“It’s the rest of the time that’s an issue.” I smiled at my son. “But he’s cute, and he says please and thank you, so I’ll keep him.”
Austin smiled. “Does that mean I can have ice cream for dessert?”
Jack and I both said no at the same time. When he smiled at me, I blushed.
His phone rang again. I snuck a peek at it lying on the table. It was Lonna. He silenced it again.
“You should get that, really.”
He stared into my eyes, then at his phone. He picked it up, said, excuse me, and walked away from the table.
Austin stuck his head into his phone, and I went back to thinking about what happened earlier in Bobby’s office.
Chapter Four
DEL SET THE COFFEE pot down on the counter. “The binder flew off the desk all by itself?”
I checked behind me and whispered. “You don’t have to announce it to the world.”
She poured half and half into my coffee, slid the cup to me, and then crooked her finger as she walked from behind the counter. I followed her to the corner table in the backside of the café.
“Had to be Agnes. She’s been known to do that kind of thing.”
“Do you really believe in ghosts, Del?” I sipped my coffee and waited while she finished drinking hers. Given the way things had gone, I’d changed my tune on ghosts. I preferred that theory to internal bleeding or some kind of brain damage from my concussion. Believing in ghosts was a whole lot easier when crazy things happened. Crazy things like whispers and binders flying across rooms.
Jack walked through the door before she had a chance to answer. Delphina eyed him with a lusty look. “Hmm, hmm, talk about improving with age. That man is like a nice bottle of wine that’s been sitting in my basement for years.”
I told her to hush as he approached us. “Ew, that’s creepy, and besides, he can hear you.”
“You think I’m worried about that?”
No, I didn’t. Not one bit.
“Ladies.” He nodded and smiled at me. “Thanks again for dinner last night. You really didn’t have to do that.”
“Dinner?” Del raised her eyebrow, but I ignored it.
“You shouldn’t have paid for me and my son,” I said, stressing the me and my son part.
“A gentleman never lets a woman pay on a date,” Del said.
“Well, it wasn’t a date, so he should have let me pay.”
She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “Emm, hmm. When a man and a woman go out to eat, it’s always a date.”
“We picked up Austin at practice, and he was hungry. It wasn’t a date.”
Jack chuckled but didn’t offer me any support.
“And why were the two of you together in the first place?”
“I told you already. We went back to Hamilton House to walk through what happened, remember?”
“Chantilly’s got a minor concussion, and I didn’t want her driving, so I offered to pick up Austin, and he was hungry, so we went and grabbed a bite at Pizzaso’s.”
Del gave him a once over. “That was mighty thoughtful of you, detective. Tell me, how’s Lonna feel about you going out to dinner with another woman?” She winked at him.
I blushed. “Delphina, don’t you be making trouble where there isn’t any.” I sat there gritting my teeth and trying not to make things worse. Lonna and I had a history, one that wasn’t all that pretty, and I didn’t want to add fuel to that fire. Lord knew I already had enough going on.
“Let me get your coffee, sweetie. You just have a seat. I’ll only be a minute.” She stood and sauntered back to the counter as if Jack had all the time in the world.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said, my face still burning with embarrassment.
“Don’t be. Del’s been trying to marry me off for years. I’m used to it.”
“You’re dating Lonna now, so maybe Del can focus her efforts on planning your wedding.”
He blinked. “Wedding? What? No, it’s not that serious. It’s not serious at all, actually. I’m not ready for that. Heck, I’m not ready to use the word dating. It’s a lot of effort to be in a relationship and drilling it down to one word like that makes me nervous.”
“I can relate to that. But Lonna, I sure hope she knows how you feel.”
He changed the subject. “How’re you feeling?”
“I’m fine, thank you. Really, I don’t know what happened yesterday. I’m sure the binder just fell and then slid across the floor or something. I’m sure I overreacted.”
He didn’t argue. “Probably.”
“Never mind the big rug on the floor.”
“You heading over to Doc Bramblett’s again?”
Del handed him a large to go cup and saved me from giving him an excuse. “Here ya go, sugar. Just how you like it.”
He handed her a five dollar bill but she refused to take it. “Men in uniform get free coffee here, and you know that.”
“It’s a tip, Delphina, and a well-deserved one.”
She smiled. “Well then, how can I refuse?” She snatched the bill right out of his hands.
He laughed, and I liked the way it sounded. Bold and strong, but not too loud, and genuine. Scott never laughed from the heart. His laugh always had a twinge of sarcasm attached to it.
“Hmm, hmm. I’ll say it again. That man is a mighty fine lookin’ man.” Del sat in the chair across from me, eying Jack’s back side and nodding as he left the café. “All that goodness packed into muscle and tight pants, why a woman could get lost in all that manliness.”
“Yes, I’m sure Lonna’s lost in it every day.”
She lifted the right side of her mouth. “Sugar, that woman don’t know what to do with a man like that.”
“And you do?”
“’Course I do, and I can teach you, too.” She smiled. “But I ain’t sure you could handle it.”
“I am not interested, but thank you.”
“It doesn’t matter if you’re interested. That man is, that much I know. Did you see the way he looked at you? Men don’t look at women like that unless they’re picturing them naked.”
A flush crept up my neck and brightened my cheeks. “Delphina, stop it. That’s crazy talk, and you know it. He’s worried about my head, about what I saw last night. He thinks I’m crazy. He is not interested in me.”
“You keep thinking that honey, but I know men, and that man has got th
e hots for you.”
“Can we please get back to the...” I paused and then whispered, “you know, Agnes situation?”
“I know how we can solve it right quick. Just to say the word.”
“The word.”
It took a second for that to sink in. “We have ourselves a little séance, that’s how.”
I laughed. “You can’t be serious. Nobody does that for real.”
“Of course they do. Unless you’ve got yourself a psychic power it’s the only way to communicate with them. Well, that and those Ouija boards, but I won’t mess with those things.” She leaned toward me. “I hear they’re evil.”
“Bless your heart, you’re just as crazy as Jack thinks I am.”
“I may be, but I’m the crazy woman that’s offering you a solution.”
She made a lot of sense, at least about that part. “I wouldn’t even know how to perform a séance.”
She waved that off with a flick of her hand. “Don’t you worry about that. I’ve seen ‘em a hundred times on TV. I watch a lot of those haunting shows. I’m an old pro. Plus, you can find anything on the internet these days.”
“How much time do you spend on the internet?”
Thelma and Olivia walked in together, waving at us from the door.
“Hey, y’all. Is this the girl’s club?” Olivia asked.
“With her here, it’s more like the toddler’s club,” Del said.
I jabbed her hand with my pointer finger. “Be nice.”
She grunted.
Thelma dragged her favorite chair from across the room. I laughed as Del’s jaw stiffened. She did an excellent job not giving Thelma a verbal lashing, though. I was impressed.
“I’ll take my regular,” Thelma said. “And this time, please put the right amount of sugar in it. Last time you cheated me a packet.” She wiggled her finger at Del. “Don’t think I couldn’t tell.”
“Don’t think I couldn’t tell,” Del muttered as she walked to the counter. “You keep being so high maintenance, I’ll tell you where you can stick that packet.”
“It’s supposed to go in my coffee,” Thelma hollered.
“That ain’t where I’m talking about,” Delphina hollered back.
Get Up and Ghost Page 6