by Terri Reid
Ashley nodded slowly. “Good question,” she replied. “We all thought it was Dave’s mom. The kitchen was dark behind her, but we could all tell that a woman was watching us.”
“When we woke up the next morning we were all surprised by the toilet paper wafting in the air from both of our trees,” Dave inserted. “They must have used eight rolls.”
Ashley shot Dave a teasing glance. “Actually, it was twelve,” she admitted. “We wanted to get you good.”
“So, what’s the punchline?” Mary asked.
“On Monday, we came up to Dave and asked him how he liked the remodeling job we’d done on his tree,” Ashley said. “And he said that everyone liked it. They live so far out of town; no one had ever teepeed them before.”
Chuckling, Dave nodded. “My mom was delighted that they’d done it,” he said.
“But, your mom, she saw them do it,” Mary said.
Dave shook his head. “No, my mom was asleep the entire time,” he said.
“Yeah,” Ashley said. “We asked Dave why his mom didn’t come out and say hi to us.” She took a deep breath. “And he told us, that wasn’t his mom. That was their ghost.”
“Wow,” Mary said.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too,” Ashley said.
Dave shrugged and grinned. “And we haven’t been teepeed since,” he added.
Ashley shook her head. “And I don’t want ever to have that kind of experience again,” she added, then she shrugged. “Okay, enough of that. Let me open the house up for you.”
Dave lifted the yellow crime scene tape so that both women could walk under it, and then he followed them up to the door. Ashley pulled out the key and began to put it in the lock when Dave stopped her.
“Um, let’s just knock first,” he suggested.
“What?” she asked, looking confused. “Dave, the guy’s dead. No one’s in this house.”
Dave nodded. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “I just feel weird about walking into his house without knocking. It feels rude.”
Ashley rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she agreed and rapped sharply on the front door.
“Come in.”
Mary and Dave both heard Harry’s voice on the other side of the door, but Ashley was oblivious.
“Can I open the door now?” Ashley asked.
“Yeah, sure,” Dave agreed with a smile. “Thanks for doing that.”
Slipping the key into the lock, Ashley turned it and then opened the door. All three of them walked into the house and froze.
Mary and Dave watched Harry lovingly take a photo of his wife off the mantle and carry it across the room to the end table next to his recliner. But all Ashley saw was a photo floating across the room from the mantle to the table.
Her eyes wide and her jaw dropped, Ashley stared at the photo. “How? How?” she stammered.
Dave put his arm around her shoulders and gently guided her back outside the house. “Remember when you said you didn’t want to have another experience like the one at my house?” he asked.
She nodded mutely.
“Yeah, so why don’t you just wait in the squad car for a couple of minutes, okay?” he asked, his voice calm and kind.
She nodded again, but just stood in place.
He turned her toward the squad car and pointed. “Over there, Ash,” he said and gave her a gentle push.
Watching until she made it back to her squad car, Dave then turned back and joined Mary inside the house.
Chapter Twenty-six
“She’s lovely,” Mary was saying to Harry as Dave walked back inside. “And she has such kind eyes.”
Harry nodded, his eyes moist with tears. “She was the kindest person I ever met,” he said softly. “And she was always doing for others. Always thinking of herself last.”
“I’m sure you miss her,” Mary replied softly.
The old man turned to her and shook his head slowly. “I don’t understand,” he said softly.
“What don’t you understand?” she asked.
“If I’m dead, why aren’t I with her?” he asked urgently. “I only want to be with Sophie. Why am I still here? Is this hell?”
Dave came over to the other side of the recliner and squatted down. “No, this isn’t hell,” he said. “But I’m sure being separated from your Sophie must feel like it.”
Harry nodded. “Yes, it does.”
“Well, the thing is,” Dave continued. “We think the reason you’re still here is that you were murdered.”
Harry sat up straight in his chair. “What? Murdered?” he exclaimed. “Who in the world would want to murder me?”
“That’s what we’d like to know,” Mary said.
He shook his head. “No, there has to be some mistake,” he said. “I had a heart attack. I had all the symptoms, pain on my right side…”
“Heart attacks generally manifest pain in the left arm,” Mary said, “not the right.”
Harry shook his head. “I’m sure it was in my right side,” he said. “In my stomach.”
“Not your arm?” Dave asked.
“No, my left arm felt fine,” Harry replied. “But I was holding my fancy drink in my right hand, and the pain got so bad I dropped it on the floor.”
“What other symptoms did you have?” Mary asked. “Before you had the attack?”
Harry thought about it for a moment. “Well, and this is funny, I had a hard time keeping my thoughts straight,” he said. “I couldn’t remember anything.”
“Okay, memory loss,” Dave said, and then he shook his head. “And now we are going to ask you to remember the other symptoms.”
Harry chuckled softly. “A bit ironic, ain’t it?” he replied, but then he concentrated for a few more moments. “Okay, I had headaches, like I never had before.”
“Anything else?” Mary asked. “Aches or pains?”
Harry turned to Mary and smiled. ‘Yeah, now that you mention it, my joints ached something fierce, like I had arthritis or something.”
“Did you have arthritis or any other medical condition?” Dave asked.
Harry shook his head. “No, siree, I just got myself a clean bill of health only about six weeks ago.”
“Well, if that’s the case…” Dave began.
“Which doctor did you use?” Mary asked, interrupting him.
Harry shrugged and scratched his head. “I can’t remember,” he said. “He wasn’t my normal doctor.”
“Why didn’t you go to your normal doctor?” Dave asked slowly.
“Nothing mysterious or anything,” Harry replied. “I had to get a checkup for my life insurance policy.”
“You got a life insurance policy?” Mary asked. “Why?”
He shrugged. “Well, since it was free, I thought it would cover some expenses when I finally died,” he said, and then he sighed. “I never thought I’d use it this soon.”
“Why was it free?” Dave asked.
Harry brightened and smiled at Dave. “That investment group I told you about,” he said. “The one with the fancy coffees, they give all their members free life insurance policies. So, I thought, what the hell?”
“Do you have a copy of the policy?” Mary asked.
Harry paused and thought about it, then shook his head. “No. No, I don’t believe I do,” he said. “They keep it on file in their offices. You know, just in case one of us dies, they can cover our expenses.”
Mary straightened and looked over at Dave. “Just in case someone dies,” she said slowly.
Dave nodded back. “Now, isn’t that just peachy of them,” he replied, then he turned to Harry. “Did their doctor give you any medications or injections?”
Harry shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “Just checked me out and said I was as healthy as an ox.”
“What happens to the money you invested?” Mary asked.
“Oh, it goes to my kids,” Harry said. “I had my lawyer look at that real good. It’s an iron-clad contract, no problem with that.”
<
br /> Dave sighed. “Is there anyone that would have wanted access to your money?” he asked.
Harry shook his head and then lowered his voice. “I didn’t tell anyone about it,” he said. “I figured I didn’t want anyone to change how they saw me. So, I put most of it in a blind account and then just used a little of the money to invest.”
“This doesn’t make sense,” Mary said. “Then why would someone want to kill you?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. “But you have to figure it out soon. I don’t want to have to wait too much longer before I can see my Sophie.”
Mary smiled at the old man and nodded. “We’ll get you two together as quickly as we can,” she said.
“Promise?” he asked.
“Promise,” she replied.
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Why did you promise him?” Dave asked Mary as they drove back to her house.
Glancing sideways from the driver’s seat, Mary was surprised to see the look of concern on Dave’s face. “I just wanted to comfort him,” she replied. “He was so sad about being separated from Sophie.”
“But what if we can’t figure this out?” Dave asked. “What if we never figure out who murdered him? Do you want another ghost in your already crowded haunted house?”
Mary paused, startled. “I hadn’t thought of that,” she admitted. “I’ve always been able to solve cases before.”
“But have you ever promised a ghost that you would solve their crime?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No. No, I never have,” she said. “And they always have come to me asking for help. I generally don’t go to them.”
“I don’t want to tell you how to do your job,” Dave said sincerely. “But making promises…”
“I might not be able to keep,” she inserted and then nodded. “Yeah, I see that could be uncomfortable.”
“Not just uncomfortable,” he said. “But dangerous. I mean Harry seems like a good guy, but after he’s been dead a while, he’s missing his wife, and he’s angry at the world. That’s not something you want following you around.”
She drove in silence for a few moments, then turned to him. “So, are you going to tell me what happened to you?” she asked.
He sent her a half-smile and nodded. “You were a good detective, weren’t you?”
She chuckled. “Really good,” she said.
“Okay, well, I was new to the whole talking to ghosts thing,” he said. “It was about a year after the Afghanistan incident, so I wasn’t closing myself off anymore.”
He sighed and sat back in his seat, staring out the window for a moment. Then he turned back to Mary. “I was in Scotland,” he said. “Just touring the area. I stayed at a castle, and a female ghost came into my room.”
“Creepy,” Mary replied.
He laughed. “Yeah, it was,” he said. “She was dressed as a serving wench, but she had the unfortunate handicap of having no head.”
“Super creepy,” Mary added.
“So, I sat up in my bed and started to chat with her,” he said.
“Wait. She had no head,” Mary exclaimed. “How did you chat with her?”
“Oh, well, she didn’t have a head attached,” he explained. “But she carried it around with her.”
Mary smiled, thinking of Earl, her headless Union soldier who had been the first ghost Bradley had ever encountered. “Okay, I get that,” she replied.
“Anyway, she was so sad that she hadn’t been able to leave the cold castle and see that light, that I thought if I told her that I would find a way home for her, it would comfort her.”
“But it didn’t?” she asked.
“No,” he said. “It definitely did not comfort her. She was immediately demanding, wanting me to fix it now. And then, when I tried to do research, I discovered that there were no records of her at all.”
“Makes it hard to move someone over if you can’t figure out why they’re still here,” Mary said.
“Exactly,” Dave said. “I left the castle about a week later after running out of places to research about her. And, it wasn’t until I was in a little hotel room in London that I discovered she’d come with me.”
Mary bit back a grin. “Was it awkward?” she asked.
He laughed and shook his head. “No, it wasn’t,” he said. “But she scared the sh…, I mean, she scared the crap out of the maid who came in to give me more towels.”
“How did you finally get rid of her?” Mary asked.
“I had to perform a religious ceremony that split the connection between the two of us,” he said. “It broke my heart a little, leaving her there with her head sitting on a platter.”
“Okay, creepy again,” Mary said.
“Yeah, okay, creepy in a kind of sympathetic way,” he replied.
She shook her head. “Nope, totally creepy.”
“Anyway, I probably will never go back to that castle again,” he said. “Which is a shame because Ian and I got along so well together.”
Mary pulled the car into her driveway and then turned to Dave. “Ian?” she asked, incredulous. “Ian MacDougal? Professor Ian MacDougal?”
Dave’s eyes widened. “Yes! You know him?” he asked.
Mary laughed. “Know him? He’s a member of the family,” she replied. “Bradley and I spent our honeymoon at his castle…”
She paused and laughed out loud, shaking her head.
“What?” Dave asked.
“Headless Hannah,” Mary replied.
“Headless Hannah?” Dave asked.
“The headless ghost in Ian’s castle,” she replied. “That was your ghost?”
Dave shrugged. “Well, I never got a name,” he said. “But I can’t believe he had a bevy of headless damsels running through his castle.”
“Well, not only was Hannah headless, she was fairly unlucky too,” Mary said.
“I figured that was an unspoken assumption, considering she was both dead and decapitated,” he replied with a smile.
“No, that’s not what I meant,” she said with a chuckle and a shake of her head. “She showed up in our room when Bradley was…” She paused remembering how her new bridegroom had danced around the room for her, in all his glory, and smiled fondly.
“I don’t think I want to know,” Dave teased when he saw the faraway look on her face.
Mary shook her head and blushed. “The point is…we found out that part of the south wall of the estate collapsed in the early 1400s and poor Hannah happened to be standing near a display of treasured armaments when the wall came down. Her decapitation was just an accident. No one murdered her, but because her death was so sudden, she had become stuck here on earth.”
“So, you moved her on?” he asked.
Mary nodded. “Yes, we watched her go to the light,” she said. “It was really lovely.”
“I guess I owe you one, Mary,” Dave said.
“Good, because now that I’ve promised Harry we’re going to solve this mystery,” she said. “I’m counting on you to help me solve it.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Mary and Dave entered the house to find Bradley in the living room, rocking a slightly upset Mikey. Mary hurried forward to take the baby from Bradley.
“I’m so sorry,” she said.
Bradley shook his head. “He just woke up,” he said. “And I just got home, so I told Rosie and Stanley that I would watch him. He’s not too upset; he’s just used to having his mom at his beck and call. I think he’s a little spoiled.”
Mary snuggled Mikey and smiled. “I’ve read that you can’t spoil babies,” she argued lightly. “But, I’m trying hard to disprove that theory.”
Bradley chuckled and leaned over to place a kiss on her forehead. “If anyone can do it, you can,” he teased.
She grinned at him. “Thanks, I appreciate your confidence,” she replied. “Okay, I’m going to take him upstairs and feed him.” She turned to Dave. “Do you mind letting Bradley know what we found at Harry
’s?”
Dave shook his head. “No, I don’t mind at all,” he replied. “Besides, I understand I owe you.”
Mary’s eyes widened in surprise, and she shook her head slightly, hoping Bradley didn’t notice. “No, Dave, really, you don’t need to go there,” she said pointedly moving her eyes in Bradley’s direction.
Dave grinned and nodded. “Okay, my mistake,” he replied.
“What?” Bradley asked, looking from Mary to Dave. “What’s going on?”
Mary shrugged and turned innocent eyes to Bradley. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
Then she smiled at both of them. “Okay, well, I’m going to go upstairs now.”
Bradley waited until Mary had climbed the stairs and closed the nursery door before he turned to Dave. “What?” he asked.
Dave laughed out loud. “Oh, her innocent act didn’t fool you?” he teased.
Bradley grinned. “She is the worst liar I’ve ever met,” he replied.
“That’s a good thing, right?” Dave asked, still smiling.
“Sometimes,” Bradley said. “And sometimes it drives me crazy.”
“Like now?” Dave asked.
Bradley nodded. “Yes, like now.”
Dave glanced up the stairs and then looked back at Bradley. “You won’t tell her that I told you?” he asked.
Bradley glanced up the stairs and them met Dave’s eyes. “Scout’s honor,” he whispered.
“Were you a Scout?” Dave asked.
Bradley grinned and nodded. “Eagle Scout,” he replied.
“Cool,” Dave said, then he glanced at the stairs one more time. “She told me about Headless Hannah.”
Bradley blushed and looked decidedly uncomfortable. “How much did she tell you?” he asked.
Dave chuckled at Bradley’s reaction. “Not that much,” he said. “She just told me that she appeared to both of you, but she didn’t give me any details.”
Bradley breathed a soft sigh of relief. “Why were you talking about Hannah?” he asked.
“Because several years ago I stayed at Ian’s place and met her,” he said. “But I couldn’t help her move on.”
“Oh, well, that makes sense,” Bradley replied. “It must have been after you were there that Ian started researching her.”