by K. J. Emrick
Yes... really... The sink caught fire.
When she had Collins back to rights again Rosie stepped back and looked at the white flour handprints she’d left behind. “Oops. Um. I’ll get someone to clean that up.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told her.
“Remind me again why we don’t have this painting hanging on the wall?”
Because, I want to tell her, the only good place to hang it is on the wall next to the fireplace, and the Inn doesn’t want anything hanging on that wall. Of course, I’m not going to tell her that. Making jokes about how phone problems and white noise are really ghosts in the lines is one thing. Saying you think your Inn is haunted...that can get you dropped into the nearest nut house. Not where I want to spend my days.
“George likes the painting,” I tell her instead. “Don’t ask me why.”
A little tug on my shirt drew my attention away. Looking down, I saw the same little blonde haired girl in her pigtails that had been playing Scrabble with her family. She stood there, obviously unsure whether she could just talk to a grownup or not.
“Well hi there,” I said to her, thinking back to when her family checked in. “It’s Kelli, right? Kelli Murphy?” She nodded, putting on a little smile because I had remembered her name. “Are you enjoying your stay here in Lakeshore?”
She shrugged. I suppose I can understand where she’s coming from. Not much for a pretty little girl of maybe nine years old to do in our town. Scenery to look at, trails to hike, and lots of pretty white buildings, but no shopping malls or other things that probably make up her life back home.
“Can I ask you a question?” she said to me in her little squeaky voice.
“Of course, dear. What can I do for you?”
“Um,” she said, looking a little embarrassed and swinging the hem of her skirt back and forth. “Can you tell me who the girl in the hallway is?”
It’s been a long time since Kevin and his sister were this young. I guess my understanding of “little nipper speak” is a bit rusty. Hooking a strand of my hair behind my ear, I bent a little closer to her. “What do you mean, honey? What girl?”
“She said she knew you,” Kelli told me, sticking her tongue out between her lips in concentration. “She’s nice, and she has yellow hair sometimes and sometimes she has black hair. That’s kind of strange. She always wears a t-shirt that has a bunch of different colors and dancing bears on it.”
I’m pretty sure I just stopped breathing for a minute. I know it took me at least that long to recover enough to ask the first thing that came to my mind. “You talked to her?”
“Well, sure.” Kelli’s face scrunched up. “She doesn’t talk back to me, though. Not much. She wants to play a game.”
“What game does she want to play, Kelli?”
“Dell?” Rosie asked me. “You all right?”
“I’m fine. Kelli, tell me what kind of game the girl wants to play?”
“Hide and seek. I can’t ever find her. She’s real good at hide and seek.”
I’ll just bet she is. The girl that Kelli is describing is my friend, Jessica Sapp.
My dead friend, Jessica Sapp.
I’m betting it’s pretty easy for a ghost to play hide and seek.
I see Jess from time to time. When she wants to be seen. I figured that was just because of how close we were. Are, I mean.
But if that’s so, then how come Kelli could see her?
Kneeling down in front of the little girl, trying not to be all crazy adult and scare the poor kid, I put a smile on my face. “That’s my friend Jessica,” I whispered to her, so quiet I’m sure Rosie can’t hear me. “Can you tell me where she plays hide and seek with you?”
“Outside,” Kelli said, like it was the most natural thing in the world. She pointed off in a direction that I translated as vaguely down by the shoreline of Pine Lake. “I try to find her, but wherever she’s hiding, it’s a really good spot.”
A woman’s voice called across the lobby from the common room. “Kelli! It’s your turn, honey. Come along now, don’t bother Miss Powers.”
I stood up and turned to wave at Kelli’s mother. “No bother, Mrs. Murphy. Kelli’s a smart girl.”
Kelli smiled up at me with the compliment. “Can you ask your friend where she’s hiding? I want to use it with my sister.”
“I will,” I promised, because I was definitely going to try cornering Jess and ask what she was doing playing hide and seek down by the shoreline.
Um. Once I figured out how to communicate directly with a ghost, that is.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” Rosie asked me as Kelli skipped back to the game of Scrabble.
“I’m great,” I promised her. “It’s just been a long day. You heard tell about Arthur Loren, right?”
Yes, I’m changing the subject. Still, I think Rosie needs to know what happened.
“Arthur? No,” she said, “I’ve been in the kitchen most of the day. What happened to the old coot?”
Her eyes pop wide when I explain it all, and she’s full of a hundred questions. I notice a few others hanging around to listen. The group of girls on their break from University were pretending not to care, but I saw one of them push her short, dyed-pink hair away from her ear and saw her eyes dart my way. There’s two or three of my staff loitering about, too. Rumors fly around this town faster than a kookaburra. No need to help them out.
Halfway through our conversation one of the kitchen staff runs out in his white coat to tell Rosie that the sauce is scalding. With a yelp she threw up her hands and turned around on her heels.
She took two steps before knocking into Lieutenant Governor Collins’ portrait again.
I caught it as she rushed off. Not sure what sauce she was making, but it must be pretty important. When I had David Collins back in place and most of the flour brushed off the frame, I checked the paperwork behind the sign-in desk and made sure everything was in order. My people had it all set, and I left after putting up the sign asking anyone who needed help to call up to my room. We’re not a four-star hotel, after all. If someone needs more towels, there won’t be a housecleaning staff on duty to take care of it after seven. That’ll be my job, whatever time of the night the call might come in.
On my way up the stairs, my mind started running through all the things from the day. I’d like to call Kevin and see if there was anything new with Arthur’s situation, whether he’d promised to call me with any new information or not. I wondered, if maybe I could ask around about what Myles had been up to recently. I needed to call James, too. Every guy thinks they’re being ignored if a girl doesn’t talk to them at least once a day. We weren’t exactly dating, not at our age, but it was whatever the next best thing was. I liked it, whatever it was, and I didn’t want him thinking I was backing out.
Because I definitely wasn’t.
Then there was that whole thing with little Kelli talking to Jess...
Halfway up the stairs the sound of a man laughing made me stop and look around. It was a rough, unkind sound, all deep resonance and harsh breathing.
I looked up. No one was near me. None of the guests.
Except Mister Brewster at the top of the stairs.
He was just standing there, watching me, with something akin to keen interest in his eyes. Like he was observing me. Watching for my reaction to... what?
The laughter, I guessed. Thing was, it hadn’t been Mister Brewster I heard laughing. This had been someone else’s voice. I don’t know who.
Seeing Brewster up there, a half-remembered thought drifted up amongst all the other ones crowded together in my mind. Didn’t Kevin ask me something about Mister Brewster? Something I was supposed to look up. What was it?
Abruptly, he turned and walked back down the second floor hallway, no doubt headed for his room. I can’t remember why Kevin and I had been talking about Brewster, and I don’t think it really matters. His peculiar ways aren’t a real concern of mine. Certainly not right no
w. There’s too many other things to worry about.
If I spent time thinking about all the dodgy folks I met here in Lakeshore, when would I ever find the time for a decent night’s sleep?
Mmm. Sleep. That sounded really good right now. It was only just in the late afternoon, but a nap might be in order. Yes. A nice nap. Maybe even a soak in the tub.
With the sudden realization that I’m just standing on the stairs for no apparent reason, I started up again, one step at a time.
Life moves on. That’s my motto.
Unless you’re standing like a bump on a log on the stairs of your own Inn.
***
When the morning came I wasn’t really prepared for the sunlight stabbing at my eyes. I tried throwing the big pink comforter of mine over my head again but it didn’t work. I was up now. No chance of getting back to sleep.
“Fine,” I grumped. “I suppose I’ve work to do anyway.”
I was still in my clothes from yesterday. Not something I usually do but hey when you’re tired there’s some things that just don’t matter, like whether you’re in fleecy pajamas or a purple blouse. I’ll have to change for the day, I remind myself. People start to talk if you wear the same clothes two days in a row.
So up I get, and a good stretch gets the blood flowing, just in time for a knock on the door.
Rubbing sleep out of my eyes, I opened up to whoever it was with a mumbled G’day, or something pretty close to it.
“’Bout time you got up, Dell.”
Jess. My friend. The one who died here in my Inn. She’s standing there, with her long blonde hair and her Grateful Dead t-shirt and her ripped jeans. Just like she’d been back in Uni. She has a tendency to change her look as it pleases her. The only thing that never changes is that pretty face of hers, always more youthful than her years. It always will be, now that she’s a ghost.
That’s not the thing that stopped me at the door. Before I stepped out into the third floor hall of my Inn I realized two things. One, Jess looked a lot more solid than a ghost had a right to.
And two, I wasn’t in the Inn.
My door had opened up onto the woods around the shore of Pine Lake. The doorway was still here, my bedroom right behind me, but in front of me were the tall Monterey pines that I knew so well. The lapping water of the wide lake. Birds calling to each other. Over there is one of half a dozen benches we have set up facing the water for our guests to sit down on and relax.
“I can’t be here,” I said, stating the obvious like people do when there just isn’t anything else to say. “Jess... how...?”
She lifted a finger to her lips, her eyes narrowed, telling me to be quiet, and then she pointed off into the trees with that same hand.
It was impossible to know what time of day it was. The sunlight had just woken me up so it should be dawn and yet the whole world was lit with a kind of silvery glow that I could only associate with evening. Shadows grew at odd angles from the trees, never in the same direction, defying all the laws of science and logic and even finger painting, for that matter.
Where Jess pointed, I saw a man standing.
He was tall, and broad across his shoulders. His back was to me and he was in shadows and there wasn’t much for me to see except the back of his head and the way he stood.
It was all I needed.
Richard. It was my Richard.
My ex-husband had left me more than five years ago, now. On my birthday, thank you very much. No explanation, no note, not even a voicemail on my cell. That should give him a permanent place at the top of my hate-you-forever list, shouldn’t it?
But seeing him here, now, on the edge of the lake, my heart melted. A warmth flooded through me. It was a feeling that I hadn’t had in a long time. I wasn’t sure what to do about it, at first.
Then, with a little noise squeaking its way out of my throat, I ran to him.
“Richard!” I called to him as I got closer. Tears blurred my vision. I couldn’t get to him fast enough. Every running step only took me a few inches at best, and I was panting and frantic by the time I could finally reach out and grab him by the shoulder and make him turn around to face me.
“Richard, why?”
He smiled at me. His eyes peered out of the shadows, glinting blue in the dark.
Richard’s eyes aren’t blue. They’re brown.
This isn’t Richard.
I mean, it was him. It had been Richard. I couldn’t mistake that body, not when I’d held it in my arms for so many years. The man I saw down here at the shore had been Richard.
And now it wasn’t.
“Hello, Dell,” he said to me. When he leaned forward, I saw his face, and now there wasn’t any doubt. This man was blockier and his nose was blunt and his eyes... were mean.
“Who are you?” I asked, my heart thumping in my chest.
“Sorry ‘bout the way I did this,” he told me. “Had to get your attention.”
“Why?” It was a stupid question. I felt stupid asking it. I just felt... I had to know.
He reached out for me, his hand getting closer to my face.
“You’ll find out,” he told me. “Soon.”
I jumped up, sitting up straight in bed, my hands tangled in the blankets until I pulled them free and I heard myself cry out in a single, sharp note.
Still in bed. I was still in bed. That had been a dream. All of it, just a stupid dream. Jess meeting me at the door, the man down by the lake, all of it.
Richard coming back to me. That had been a dream, too.
Sobbing uncontrollably, I twisted myself into the covers again, waiting for the dawn.
Chapter Four
“You look like rubbish.”
“Thanks, Kevin.” That little smirk on his face reminds me so much of his father. Richard. The same smile I saw in my dream last night, before Richard had morphed into... that other man.
Dreams are funny. I’ve always thought they meant something. If that’s true, then what in the name of God did that whole scene down by the lake mean? I thought it might be somehow clearer in the light of day, standing down here at the registration desk again, burying myself in my work. Nope. It was still just as eerie and confusing as it had been before.
“Mom?” Kevin sounded worried. “You good?”
“I’m just a bit tired. You must be here on official business?” He’s in his uniform again, and that’s not unusual, but my son stopping by the Inn while he’s on duty certainly is. “Did Arthur wake up?”
Shaking his head, he leaned up against the desk. “He’s still out, according to the hospital. Stable though, which is good. Maybe he’ll wake up today. I don’t know.”
It’s still early in the morning. Like he said, Arthur’ll come out of his state later today, hopefully, and then we’ll have some more information.
After I finally crawled out of bed I’d dressed in khakis and a sleeveless, purple satin top, fixed my hair up and put on a smile I didn’t really feel. I was here, but I wasn’t exactly awake yet. Stifling a yawn I smiled to some of the guests who were just coming down from their rooms for the day. Kevin was drawing more than a few stares from people who, I’m sure, were hoping for some excitement like what they’ve read about in the newspapers. The police were at the Inn. This was their lucky day.
Maybe they should be careful what they wish for.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked him, nodding to Kelli and her family. “I mean, you aren’t here for Rosie’s breakfast blintzes, are you?”
“I’m on duty,” he joked. “Mom, ya know I can’t talk about an ongoing investigation.”
The things a mother knows. My son is a strong, wonderful man. I’m very proud of him but sometimes he tries to be too strong. When he’s stressed he doesn’t usually show it. Not in any obvious way, anyways. Anyone else would miss the way Kevin’s Aussie comes out more when he’s stressed. His accent becomes less Heath Ledger and more Steve Irwin. Happens that way sometimes. I’ve talked with some Americans who get ne
arly unintelligible when they’re upset, what with that crazy version of the Queen’s English they use.
“Don’t tell me Senior Sergeant Clacker’s back in town?”
He gave me a meaningful look. “Senior Sergeant Cutter,” he corrected my playful description of his boss, “is still out of town. Bruce Kay’s still in charge. Which means my backside’s in a vice. He’s not one for sharing. Or, thinking things through. Can’t tell ya much.”
“So? What can you tell me?”
“Well, if I could yack about this at all I’d tell ya that we got a search warrant for Myles’s paperwork. The files he was being so secretive about. If we got those files then we might know a bit of something. That’s what I’d tell ya.”
“If you were going to tell me,” I said, playing into the little game he’d started.
“Exactly. If.”
“But you can’t tell me a thing.”
“Right again.”
“So, um, if you can’t tell me anything why’d you come down here?”
His smile came back, followed by a wink. “Tell ya more on that later.”
I gave him one of those looks I used to give him when he tried to keep a secret from me as a kid. It used to be really effective back then. Now... not so much.
Raising his hands up he shook his head. “Seriously, that’s all I can... I mean, can’t say. Just wanted to ask my mom if she could join me for a bite of lunch. Down at the station. Maybe you could pack me some of Rosie’s leftovers?”
I’m pretty sure he’s telling me he has something to show me. Something he can’t just bring here. But, if I were to show up at the police station while he was working on this case, then if I saw something it would all be by accident.
Crafty boy, my Kevin.
“I’ll see you there,” I promised. “Around one?”
“Make it noon, can ya?” he asked instead. “I think Kay plans on taking his lunch ‘round eleven. Means he’ll be getting back around one.”
“Two hour lunch?”
Kevin just shrugged. “Par for the course. Cutter’s kind of bloke.”
“They all are,” I reminded him, meaning the other four officers of the Lakeshore PD. “All of ‘em except you.”