Double, Double, Nothing But Trouble (A Mellow Summers Paranormal Mystery Book 10)

by Janet McNulty

  “Something tells me that you are going to come with me anyway,” I said.

  “Just snuggle under those blankets,” ordered Rachel.

  I obeyed. You can’t argue with a ghost, especially when that ghost is named Rachel. I laid back down, tucking the comforter under my chin. If Rachel did return with a glass of warm milk, I never knew it, since I had fallen back asleep.

  I awoke when the sun had just come up, its faint light trying to poke through the shade that covered my window. I didn’t see Rachel, but had a feeling that she was still around. After dressing, and failing to comb out the tangled mess that was my hair, I shuffled out of my bedroom and into the living room, where I parked my butt on the cushiony couch.

  A tray with a plateful of eggs, bacon, toast, and a cup of coffee appeared in my lap, handed to me by Rachel, who wore an apron around her waist. “Breakfast is served.”

  Jackie moseyed into the room, yawning so big that a hornets could have built a nest in her mouth. I gaped at her. This had to have been the first time in the years I have known her where she did not look picture perfect. Her normally smooth and perfectly groomed hair resembled a gnarly wad of tangled wires, a few strands flopping in her face. She scratched her side and yawned some more. “Morning,” she said.

  “You look like you’ve had about as much sleep as me,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.” Jackie snatched a piece of bacon from my plate and chewed on it, her eyes still half closed from wanting to go back to sleep.

  “You know, if you wanted some bacon,” Rachel said to Jackie, her hands on her hips, “all you had to do was ask.” She huffed as she stormed back into the kitchen and brought out another plate of bacon, eggs, and toast, shoving it into Jackie’s unsuspecting hands.

  “We need to find out who was trying to kill Detective Shorts,” I said.

  Jackie gulped down her mouthful of eggs. “I knew you were going to say that.”

  “We can’t just…”

  “I’m not saying we should,” said Jackie, interrupting me. “Let’s be extra careful on this one. You could have been hit yesterday.”

  “I know,” I said. “I just can’t let this go. It’s too odd. Three shops get broken into, all on the same stretch of real estate, but nothing is taken. Then, someone takes a few shots at Detective Shorts.”

  “Eat first,” said Jackie, and Rachel nodded her head in approval, “then we will go see Jack. Greg got a partial license plate number. Maybe Jack can help us look up a few matches.”

  My phone rang. I started to hurry over to it, but Rachel had beaten me to it, snatching my phone and dumping it in my lap. “Hello,” I said.

  “Mel?’” Tiny’s voice sounded even worse than it did when I had taken over the chicken noodle soup. “I heard about yesterday. I’m coming over.”

  “No, you’re not,” I said. “You sound terrible and the best thing for you to do is to stay home and rest.”

  “Not while someone is taking shots at you,” argued Tiny through a fit of garbled coughs. “Now, I’m coming over.”

  “Tiny, the best thing you can do is stay home.”

  “I’ll handle this,” said Rachel as she vanished.

  A few seconds later I heard Tiny on the other end and it sounded as though someone was beating him up.

  “Hey! What are you… leave… I don’t… OKAY!”

  “Now you stay in that bed until I tell you otherwise,” I heard Rachel yell at him as I pressed the phone to my ear.

  Rachel reappeared in the living room. “There,” she said. “That should take care of him. The idiot, wanting to come over here with his cold, as though you need to catch it too.”

  “On second thought, Mel,” said Tiny over the phone, “I think I will stay here, but if anything else happens, I’m sending one of my boys over.”

  “Thanks, Tiny,” I said. “You just concentrate on getting better.”

  Tiny harumphed and hung up, no doubt not liking the fact that he just got scolded and ordered about by a ghost.

  Once I had finished talking to Tiny, I called Greg and he answered on the first ring. “Greg? How’s Detective Shorts.”

  “Still unconscious,” he replied. I could tell that he hadn’t gotten much sleep.

  “If you’d like, I’m sure Rachel wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on him while you come home and go to bed.”

  “Can’t,” said Greg. “I’ve got to get to work in a couple of hours.”

  “I’ll stay with him,” said Rachel, tearing off her apron. “No problem!”

  “Are you sure you can’t just call in?” I asked Greg.

  “No,” said Greg. “I used up some vacation time for last weekend and I only get a certain amount of sick days. I’ll be fine. I’ll just take a cab to work and then take one to get home.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Don’t worry about me.”

  “Okay, well, Jackie says that you got a partial license plate number from that car yesterday. We were going to go to Jack and see if he could try finding some matches.”

  “Good idea,” said Greg. “You two head down there. I’ll call Jack and see to it that he doesn’t give you any grievances about being asked to help.”

  “Love you,” I said.

  “Love you back,” said Greg.

  “AWW,” said Rachel, “you two are so sweet to one another.”

  My face turned red.

  “All right,” said Rachel. “I’ll go relieve your fiancé and no one is going to get past the door to the detective’s room.”

  “Except maybe the doctors and nurses,” mumbled Jackie over a mouthful of toast.

  “Except the doctors and nurses,” agreed Rachel.

  “And maybe us,” continued Jackie.

  “And you guys, of course,” Rachel said.

  “And maybe the police officer on guard there,” Jackie added.

  “And maybe—are you about finished?”

  Jackie nodded; a few crumbs dropped in her lap as she did.

  “I know what to do!” Rachel disappeared with a gust of wind this time, tussling Jackie’s mop of bed-hair.

  We finished our breakfast and left for the police station. There weren’t many people there. It seemed as though everyone had either taken the day off, or every available person was searching for the man who had shot Detective Shorts. Jackie and I snuck in past the front desk, which wasn’t difficult since the lady who was supposed to be there had left, and hurried down into the basement where Jack’s office was. He worked as their IT guy and was responsible for making certain that their computers and database remained up to date and secure, which was why we often came to him for assistance in looking up information, besides the fact that he was also Greg’s cousin.

  When we arrived in his office, Jackie and I found Jack waiting for us. He held up a manila envelope without even looking up from the computer screen.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  I opened the envelope and pulled out a list of possible matches to the license plate that Greg had gotten a partial number off of, with Jackie leaning over my shoulder eager to know where to begin. Five possibilities.

  “Is there anything else you can tell us?” I asked Jack.

  “Nope,” said Jack, still glued to his computer.

  “Are we bothering you?” Jackie asked in a sarcastic tone.

  “Yep,” replied Jack.

  Jackie raised her hand to smack him, no doubt taking lessons from Rachel on how to get a point across, but I seized it and pulled her back, shaking my head. She jerked her arm free, relenting.

  “Let’s go,” I said to her. “Thanks again, Jack,” I called to him as Jackie and I left.

  We started with the first address on the list. It took us to a small bungalow style house in a secluded neighborhood. When I saw the car with the matching license plate in the driveway, I knew that it wasn’t the one we searched for. The vehicle was a 20-year-old corvette, its rusty fender being held in place by duct tape and bungee cords.

  Jackie ch
ecked it off the list and we headed to possibility number two. An abandoned looking house greeted us. Its slanted roof sagged under the weight of the snow we’ve had falling at a constant pace for the last four weeks. A similar mound of wet snow filled the single lane driveway. We got out of the car and walked up the driveway, forging our way through knee-deep snow. I had already suspected that this was not the car and as I ran my hand across the back, exposing the license plate from underneath the snow, my suspicions were confirmed.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “This isn’t the car. There is no way someone parked it here yesterday and all of this snow showed up.”

  Jackie agreed and we moved to the next place, which was at a rundown apartment complex. We found the third car with ease, but my hopes at it being the one we wanted were dashed. Not only was it not a black sedan, but the car itself was up on cinderblocks with its tires missing. So much for that idea.

  Possibility number four proved to be another dead end. When we arrived, a tow truck was dragging the car (though it was a black sedan) away and the owner had informed us that she hadn’t been able to get it to start for the last two days.

  “Should we check the last one on the list?” asked Jackie, doubtful about how helpful it would prove.

  “Might as well,” I replied.

  We drove to the final address on the list, which took us to a more well-to-do area of the city, with nice fenced in homes that were all part of a gated community. I slowed the car, unsure if we would be allowed in. Most of these communities require people to have an access code, or some sort of permission to enter. Hoping that I needed neither, I approached the gate on the right and a guard stopped us.

  “Name?” he asked, all businesslike.

  “Mellow Summers,” I said.

  “What address are you visiting?” he asked.

  Before I had a chance to answer, a delivery van pulled up to the second gate (the one on the left) and the guard waved him through.

  “We’re with him,” I said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Look I have an order here in the trunk for the party that he is also delivering to. It’s my first week on the job and if I don’t make this delivery I’ll…”

  “All right. All right. Don’t get your coat in a knot.” He pressed a button from inside the guardhouse and the gate opened. “Next time you are making a delivery here, be sure to call ahead of time to get a pass.”

  “Thank you so much,” I said, acting grateful and appreciative of the guard’s niceness.

  Before he had a chance to change his mind and ask more questions, I sped off and followed the winding road to the street we searched for, while Jackie watched the house numbers.

  “There it is,” she said, pointing at a two-story, dull yellow house with white trim.

  I parked across the street. I didn’t want to attract attention. A black sedan sat in the driveway. I shut off the car and hurried over to it with Jackie right behind me; the piece of paper with the license plate number on it waved in the wind as I clutched it. I read the license plate number and it matched.

  “Look,” I said to Jackie.

  “Holy… Mel, I think you’ve found it.”

  The door to the garage opened with harsh voices spilling from it. Jackie and I ran back to the car, ducking low in an effort to not be seen. When I looked back, I knew we hadn’t been spotted.

  “We should call the police,” said Jackie. “They have a number that you can call anonymously. We should call it and let them know that the car is here.”

  I agreed and had just pulled out my cell phone when another car pulled up and a man and a woman stepped out. They had to have been detectives. Their gait and the way they carried themselves displayed as much; and one of them pointed at the license plate on the car. Jackie and I watched as they questioned the two men, one younger and one much older, who had ceased their argument for the moment.

  “Yeah, that’s my car,” said the older one, “but I haven’t been here all week.”

  “Does anyone have access to your car?” asked the female detective.

  “My son does. Wait a minute? Are you implying that we had something to do with that shooting yesterday?”

  “Sir,” said the other detective, “we’re going to need you and your son to come with us.”

  “Now, wait a minute!”

  “Sir…”

  A struggle ensued as the older man put up a fight, shouting about his rights and how he had nothing to do yesterday’s attempt on Detective Shorts’ life. After the detectives had put both men in the back of their car, they left, having never seen me or Jackie.

  “I think we should go.”

  So did I. I started the car and high-tailed it out of there, but as we left, we passed a beautiful two story home, with a wraparound porch, and tended shrubbery that glistened from the snow that draped over them. In front of the house, clearing the walkway, was a man. I allowed myself to stare at him a bit, thinking that I had seen him before.

  “Mel, pay attention!” Jackie shouted at me.

  I snapped my eyes forward, realizing that I was about to rear end a parked car and jerked the wheel, avoiding it by a few inches, but plowed into a snowbank on the side of the road.

  “What’s gotten into you?” asked Jackie. “You almost hit that car! And it was parked!”

  “Sorry,” I replied. “I thought I saw someone I recognized.” I looked back, but the man had gone, not that I needed have worried because he showed up right outside the driver’s window.

  “Can’t you drive?” he demanded, holding a snow shovel over his right shoulder.

  “Uh…”

  “You’ve no business being here,” he continued. “This is a closed community. How did you get past the guard?”

  I tried to think of a valid excuse, but every possible one that entered my mind sounded more feeble than the last.

  “Well?” demanded the man.

  “Donald, that will be quite enough,” said a woman in a stern voice. “Now get something to help pull them out of this snow pile.”

  Grumbling, and no doubt angry at having been reprimanded, he stalked off, waving the snow shovel before him.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “We didn’t mean to scare him. All this ice has made the roads really slippery.”

  “Oh, don’t worry about it.” The woman’s silver hair blew in the breeze, framing her face a little with the few tendrils that fought against the wind. “Donald can be a little off-putting, but he’s harmless.”

  “We weren’t trying to upset your son,” I said.

  “He’s not my son,” laughed the woman. “Donald is the gardener. Well, groundskeeper mostly. He helps me with the outdoor tasks that I find I can’t do myself anymore.”

  I felt embarrassed.

  “I am Beverly Waverly. I noticed your car sitting on the curb down there.”

  “We were just…”

  “I know who you are, Miss Summers.”

  Jackie’s eyes widened and she made a movement with her hands, telling me to get away from there before we found ourselves facing the police again, though forgetting that we were trapped by a mound of snow.

  Beverly must have noticed Jackie’s sudden movements because she put her hand out to calm us down. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to report you, but you have been making waves in the papers lately.” She held up yesterday’s newspaper with the second of Jillian’s scathing articles about me. “Though I would like to know what brought you here.”

  “We were just…” I began, but Jackie jumped in and finished my sentence for me.

  “Were just working on another case.”

  I gaped at her. What was she doing?

  Beverly’s eyes lit up and I realized that Jackie must have sensed something I hadn’t: Beverly Waverly was on my side. “Really? And so your abilities led you here?”

  “Sort of,” I said. She didn’t need to know that I had gotten a list of possible matches to the black sedan’s license plate fro
m someone employed at the local police department. “My abilities don’t always work…”

  “To the house down the street there,” interrupted Jackie, “but the police have already stopped by.”

  “Oh, I know. Poor man. He would never do anything, like shooting on a crowd of people. The police must have it wrong, which is why they need you.” Beverly looked at me when she said that last part.

  “I don’t know about that,” I said, “but my work was broken into a few days ago and…”

  “Where do you work?”

  “The Candle Shoppe,” I replied. “It’s a little store in the center of downtown.”

  “Yes, I know where it is,” said Beverly. “That place used to be a photography studio; well, the entire strip used to be.”

  “Really?” said Jackie. “I never knew that.”

  “Well, how could you?” chuckled Beverly. “That was about 20 years ago, back when Roger…” She stopped speaking and her voice choked up a bit.

  “Roger?” I asked.

  “Someone both my son and I used to know, but that was a long time ago.”

  Donald rode up on one of those small tractors with a blade for plowing snow attached to the front. It’s loud roar filled what silence remained in the air. He jumped off it, carrying a rope in his hands—his gruff and mechanical movements making it clear that he was not thrilled with being forced to pull our car out of the snowbank—and tied one end of the rope around my rear bumper, while the other end was tied to the tractor.

  “Gun the engine as I pull you out,” he said to me. “And make sure your emergency brake isn’t on.”

  I did as he asked, keeping my eyes on him in the rearview mirror. When he gave me the signal, I punched the gas pedal just as he tugged on the car with his tractor. My car rocked back and forth a bit, making me somewhat seasick, but with one final pull on his part, and another stomp on the accelerator, my car popped free of the snow mound. It wasn’t that stuck, but just needed that little bit of a tug. Once freed, I got out and checked the front end; it wasn’t damaged, just a few scrapes in the paint and a couple of dings.