by K. J. Emrick
I held onto the unicorn necklace and tried to puzzle it through.
I’m not sure when the thought bubbled up from the back of my brain that I could just go home, but there it was. Back to Lakeshore. Back to the Inn and my normal life and my normal problems. They must have fixed up the fireplace by now. I wouldn’t even know that it had once been my husband’s final resting place. I could just go back to being Dell Powers, small town Inn owner. Life goes on, as I like to say.
There. Now I had a plan. Go back to the cabin, pack my bags and go home.
Hold on, I heard myself say as I hugged my arms across myself. Was I being too abrupt? Was I being unfair to James? No, on both counts. I was being fair to myself for a change. Ghosts, boyfriends, mysteries… I could just leave all that behind for once and care about just myself.
The chill in the night air made me shiver.
I felt a hand settle on my shoulder. Annoyed, not wanting to speak to anyone at all, I still turned around to see who it was.
A woman’s face stared back at me, pretty despite being ghastly white. Long flowing blonde hair stirred in a breeze that wasn’t there. Eyes that were blank and dark stared into me, and through me. Her dirty white dress was torn and ripped and… bloodied.
“If you won’t speak for us,” she asked me in a voice that came from a vast distance away, “then tell me who will?”
Then she disappeared in wisps of nothing.
Chapter 3
So, I’m not going home after all.
Back in the cabin, I changed out of my dress and into an old t-shirt and a pair of drawstring sweats that were pink and comfy. I was in for the night. I don’t know who that ghost was but I won’t ever forget her face, or her words.
If you won’t speak for us, then tell me who will?
Ghosts don’t usually speak to me. From what I can gather it takes a lot of energy or motivation or what-have-you for a ghost to communicate with the world of the living. Maybe that’s why she disappeared as soon as she’d said those few words.
As much as I wanted to be a normal woman of forty-something, I had a gift. I had a responsibility. I spoke for the dead. The ghost was right. There was obviously something going on here at Port Arthur that was at once mysterious and deadly. It was going to be up to me to find out what that something was, and help the dead find peace.
And, quite possibly help the living stay alive. Come to think of it, the ghost in the car park outside the restaurant bore a striking resemblance to the university girl with the heart tattoo. They both had pretty, oval faces and high cheekbones and those thin eyebrows that women give themselves sometimes by spending hours in front of a mirror with a set of tweezers. I never really went in for that sort of thing. I didn’t wear much makeup or spend half my morning making myself pretty, either. I was just naturally who I was, and men could take it or leave it.
My husband used to tell me that I didn’t need to do anything to be beautiful. I remember laying in his arms, with him stroking my hair, and saying how pretty I was…
The way I look had always been enough for my husband Richard. It had been enough for James, too. Or at least that’s what I’d thought before seeing him shove me aside to chase a story today. It was obvious that I was nowhere near the top of James’ list of things that caught his attention.
Ahem. Anyway. The ghost had long blonde hair. So did the university girl. Even their body type—athletically thin—had been the same. Don’t let it happen again, the ghosts had been warning me. Now a girl had been kidnaped. A girl who looked a lot like a ghost I just met.
Could it be that there had been kidnappings here at Port Arthur in the past?
That was an interesting thought. If that was true… what next?
Was I supposed to find the missing girl? That seemed a little far-fetched. If the police couldn’t find a kidnapped girl, then it wasn’t all that likely that I could. I took a moment to say a little prayer for her safe return… what was her name again? Oh yes, right…Rory Hunter.
Rolling my eyes at the absurdity of any ghost expecting Dell Powers to be some sort of miracle worker super sleuth, I grabbed up the cabin’s phone and ordered a delivery pizza. A girl had to eat. Especially when she storms out of a restaurant without even sampling the bread plate.
While I waited, I paced. I needed to do some internet research. I needed to talk to some people to see what they could tell me. The other two university kids would be the logical people to start with. If I knew where they were staying. I could probably figure that out. Port Arthur wasn’t all that big.
Who else?
The tour guide, maybe, except I’d have to wait until tomorrow to find him at the penitentiary site again. Or would they be closed tomorrow, too?
Then there was that American, I thought to myself. Loud, obnoxious, and rude didn’t necessarily make him a kidnapper, but it made him not a nice person. Not nice people were the ones who usually did bad things, in my opinion. Like kidnap people. And he’d sure been acting suspicious at lunch in Felons Bistro. That bag he’d been carrying. That large, heavy bag.
Oh, snap. What was in that bag?
Very vivid, very gory images came to my mind. A slim athletic woman could be fit in a bag like that. With a little work.
I had to be wrong.
Only, I had the feeling there was a very good chance that I wasn’t.
Should I call the police? What was I going to tell them if I did? Hello, there’s a rude American here in Port Arthur who has a big black bag and well I think he may have stuffed the girl you’re looking for into it. Best head on over to check that out.
I might get myself arrested with a story like that.
If anyone was going to talk to our American friend, then it was going to have to be me. Only, I didn’t know where he was. There are a few hotels and motels and rental cabins here in Port Arthur. Going door to door at each one wasn’t going to get me anything but sore feet. If the guy was even still in town, that is. If the kidnapped girl was dead, why would the killer stick around?
My eyes popped wide in surprise. He would stay around, because there were other girls to kidnap here.
Don’t let it happen again.
Fine. I speak for the ghosts. I have to stop the killer before he kills again. So how do I do that…?
The knocking at the door was sudden and unexpected. Oh, right. The pizza. Well, I would be able to think a lot better if my stomach could stop growling. So, time for pizza.
“Just a tick,” I called out, going for my purse next to the television, and the wallet inside, and the twenty dollars I had tucked in there.
Stopping at the door to look out through the peep hole I saw a large cardboard box filling my view, a red silhouette of a kangaroo on it carrying a slice of pizza.
Still thinking about bags and dead bodies, I opened the door. My mouth was already watering for the pizza. Prawn and bacon, thank you very much. “Here you go, mate…” I held the money out, enough for the price plus a tip.
Only, the person handing me the pizza box wasn’t a mate. It was our neighbor Stevie, minus her curlers. Instead she had her long, bouncy brown hair tucked into a baseball cap, wearing a collared t-shirt that matched her red khaki shorts. She held out the pizza box to me with a smile.
“Fifteen even,” she told me. “Thanks for your business.”
“This is your night job?” I couldn’t help it. The words just burst out of me. “You deliver pizzas?”
With two fingers, she tapped the bill of her cap. “A girl’s got to make a living.”
“Heh,” I chuckled. “Sounds like something I’d say.”
It really did, but that didn’t stop me from wondering about Stevie here. Renting a cabin, at these prices, and she works delivering pizzas at night? Pay must be super good.
“Eating alone?” she asked me.
With the pizza box in one hand, the other one poised to close the door, I found myself staring at her. She had her money. Shouldn’t she be leaving?
�
��I mean,” she said with that same easy smile, “if you’re just hanging out with pizza and a movie I’m not doing anything. Fancy some company?”
“Aren’t you working?”
“Just finished.” Taking her cap off she stepped past me, making it look like I’d been holding the door open for her the whole time.
“I really wasn’t expecting company.” I suppose I should have told her to just get out, but I was trying to be polite. “I mean, I’m in my pajamas, Stevie.”
“Where’s that man of yours?” she asked me, ignoring my objections and sitting very comfortably in the padded chair in the corner. “You two have another row?”
“Not sure what you mean.”
“Oh, hon, I was here earlier, remember?”
The bed seemed like a good enough place for the pizza. There was a table over by where Stevie was sitting but I figured putting the food down next to her would only encourage her to stay. I’m not sure what she was on about. My relationship with James was none of her business.
“Look, Stevie. I’ve had a long day. Why don’t you take a few slices with you over to your cabin?” There. That was subtle, wasn’t it?
“Tell you what,” she said. “There’s an episode of This Is Not My Life on Gem tonight. You and me, some good TV, and a couple of stubbies. What d’ya say?”
Apparently, Stevie didn’t do subtle.
I crossed my arms and tried to stare her down. What was her deal? I know that I’m a very fascinating woman but I can’t say that I’ve ever had people just barge their way into my room and want to share pizza and beer over reruns of admittedly good TV shows. There was something else going on with her. Surprises in my life were rarely good ones. That was my experience, anyway.
Stevie was watching me, and I could almost feel her reading my thoughts. A kidnapped girl, ghosts begging for my help, and now this woman who was half my age showing up on my doorstep. If I could see the dots, I’d connect them. All I had—figuratively speaking—was a blank page with something that resembled a Rorschach test. It was up to me to decide what it looked like.
“Stevie,” I said, “what are you doing here?”
She pointed to the bed next to me. “You have pizza.”
“I know I have pizza. I ordered it. You brought it. What are you doing here in my cabin?”
If I was expecting a straight answer, I was going to have a long time to wait.
“Shame about that girl being snatched, eh?”
This conversation was beginning to resemble Alice’s trip down the rabbit hole, if you ask me. The Cheshire Cat and the Queen of Hearts should be popping out at any moment. “Yes, it’s a shame,” I answered her. “That sort of thing happen here a lot?”
“I’m sure I wouldn’t know,” she said. “Do you have any plates?”
“What?” Of course. We need plates to eat the pizza. “No. There’s no plates. Why don’t you know if there’s been other kidnappings in Port Arthur before?”
“Oh, I’m not from here. Haven’t been in town all that long, really.”
“But… you work for the pizza place. You live in town and you work in town, but you’re not from here?”
“Nope. So do you have beer or should I go get some from my cabin?”
My head was beginning to spin like a two-pot screamer already but it was obvious that I wasn’t going to be getting rid of Stevie anytime soon. At the same time, I think I wanted to talk with her. She brought up the kidnapping of Rory Hunter. Like she had something to say about it. Well if she wanted to talk, then I wanted to listen.
“There’s some longnecks in the mini fridge,” I told her. “Grab us a couple. I’ll turn on the tele.”
“Great.” She slapped her hands down on her thighs and then jumped up from the chair, looking honestly excited. “You and me and a girl’s night in. This’ll be fully sick!”
I turned away to open the pizza box. The smell was fantastic and my stomach growled to see the melted cheese and juicy prawns laid out around the circle of tasty goodness. It wasn’t the pizza that held my attention though. It was Stevie. I had questions like why she was here, and why in God’s name she felt the need to have girl time with me?
Might be worth following through with this and seeing what she had to say. If she was going to kill me, she’d have done it by now.
Right?
The sound of two bottle caps being popped reminded me to move again. I’d been planning on eating out of the box anyway, so I pushed it to the center of the spare bed and sat down on the edge, grabbing a piece for myself, then taking one of the bottles of beer from Stevie. I took a long pull of it before following up with several bites of the pizza.
“This is great,” I admitted. “How long have you worked for this place?”
“A while now.” Stevie sat on the other side of the bed, claiming a floppy slice for herself. “It’s all worth it for the free pizza we get to swipe. So where’d ya say James was?”
For the barest of seconds, I hesitated, pizza slice in my mouth, halfway through a bite. Chewing and swallowing gave me another moment to form an answer. “He’s at dinner with a new mate that he met.”
“Ah. Didn’t want to go with him?”
“No,” I said, a little more abruptly than I meant to. “I wanted to come back here and have a private dinner with just myself.”
“And now you get to have it with me instead,” she replied with a big grin, reaching across to clink her bottle against mine where it rested against the side of my leg. “Ain’t it great how things turn out?”
“Okay. That’s enough.” I tossed my half-eaten pizza slice back into the box. The longneck got slammed down on the little table between the beds next to the alarm clock. “Stevie, you seem like a perfectly nice girl, and such, but—”
“You really think so?”
I stopped midsentence. “Do I… what now?”
Now she set her pizza aside as well, on the inner side of the open box top, and she wrapped both of her hands around the bottle in her hand. I could see the whites in her knuckles. “Did you mean it? That I’m, um, a perfectly nice girl?”
It seemed really important to her that my answer be yes, although for the life of me I couldn’t figure why. She didn’t know me. I didn’t know her. Truth be told, what she seemed like was a perfectly annoying person, barging in like this and insinuating herself into my night. On the other hand, sure, she seemed nice. Pushy, but nice. Odd, but nice.
My gut instinct was telling me there was a lot more to her. Something I wasn’t going to like. She still might be caught up in the events here, and pushing her away wouldn’t get me any answers.
So…
“Yes,” I told her. “You seem like a nice girl. It’s just that I’d planned on spending the evening by myself… er, contemplating a few things. So if you wouldn’t mind leaving me to it?”
That took the wind out of her sails. I wasn’t trying to make her feel bad. Unless I really wanted to sit here with her for the next few hours watching television—which I didn’t—then I needed her to leave so I could set my mind back on figuring out my next step.
“Has James ever been married?” Stevie asked me, just like that.
I’m thinking, maybe, that this girl has gone full on bonkers. All these questions, out of the blue with no rhyme or reason to them, and she’s still sitting here staring into the opening of her longneck. Might need me a crowbar to get her out.
“No,” I told her as I stood up. “James has never been married before.”
“Okay. Okay, that’s good.” She took one last pull of her beer and then got up off the bed herself. Apparently it had finally sunk in that I wanted her to go.
“What does that matter?” I asked. “You don’t know James. You don’t know me. Why do you care if he’s gone hiking or bungee jumping or whatever, before?”
The look that crossed her face was almost apologetic. Like, ‘oops I’ve done it again.’ “Um. That’s a little hard to explain.”
“You haven
’t had any trouble talking to me so far,” I pointed out. “You wanted to have a girl’s night and talk, so talk. What’s your interest in me and James? What’s your interest in the kidnapped girl?”
Stevie took a long, slow breath, shifting on her feet as she did. Then she made herself stand up straight, and made herself look me in the eye.
Which was when the door opened again. James stumbled to a halt halfway through.
“Uh, hello again,” he said, catching sight of who my guest was. “Stevie, isn’t it?”
The breath Stevie had been holding in burst out in a strained squeak. She stepped over to the padded chair in the corner to retrieve her cap and then she crammed it on with the bill down low. “I was delivering the pizza,” she told James. “Because that’s my job. I deliver pizza. Well, better get back to it.”
She shot me a sidelong glance before brushing past James and walking swiftly away into the night. Hadn’t she said she was done for the night. Come to think of it that would be a bit odd, wouldn’t it? She couldn’t have been at work for more than a couple of hours, considering she’d been asleep just before me and James got ready to go to dinner. No way was she renting this place and only working a couple of hours a night.
“What was that about?” James asked me, closing the door and locking the deadbolt in place. “She delivers pizza?”
“I’m not so sure.” I took my beer back and another slice of pizza to go with it. I had to think, but I had to eat as well. I was starving. “Have you ever seen that girl before?”
“What, her? No. Why should I?”
He was immediately defensive, and I suddenly realized that my question sounded like an accusation. “I didn’t mean it that way, James. She came over after I ordered the pizza. She’s been here the last ten or fifteen minutes, just asking me questions.”
That got his interest. “What sort of questions?”
“About me and you. Funny thing is she started off by talking about the girl who got kidnapped.” I chewed and swallowed a bite of prawn and cheese. “I’m telling you, James, I think maybe she’s involved in what happened.”
He looked at me skeptically, then went to the fridge to get his own beer. “I knew you couldn’t stay away from the mystery, Dell. It’s just who you are. Truth be told though, I half expected to get myself back here and find you packed and gone. What changed yer mind?”