Ghost Haste

by ReGina Welling

  “All the units are set to run for a few minutes on Sundays just to make sure everything is working correctly. Leo and I both receive an alert if they don’t.” I had reminded Clyde of this before, but I flicked the main switch anyway—something he could have done himself—and the generator rumbled to life. “See, everything’s working fine.”

  My smile felt forced. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Matter of fact, there is.” He banged his cane on the floor. “I need some things from the grocery store.” Clyde pulled a piece of folded paper out of his shirt pocket, handed it to me, then reached for his wallet while I yanked my lower jaw back up.

  “I didn’t mean—” I began to talk my way out of errand duty, then thought better of it. With the flu still raging through town, it might be best for him to stay out of the grocery store. No sense in costing Leo a tenant because I didn’t care much for Clyde’s attitude. He was my last stop of the day, and there were a few things I could pick up for myself. It wouldn’t take long to come back around this way, so saying no would just be churlish.

  “’Preciate it.” He gave me the rent check, dug out his wallet, peeled off a couple of tens, and handed those to me as well. “That oughta cover it. Hurry and get back before that white crap starts to pile up.”

  I left, and as I pulled my car door shut, the first flakes drifted across my windshield. It was quarter to noon.

  At the grocery store, the bread aisle looked like a hurricane had hit. Only a few loaves sprawled across the shelves.

  “Ain’t much milk left, either.” A man I didn’t know brushed past me to grab all but one of the remaining loaves. “Better get a gallon or two before they’re gone.”

  I wouldn’t go through two gallons of milk if the storm lasted a week, but Clyde had bread and a quart of milk on his list, so I took the last loaf and headed toward the coolers. I wasn’t in the store more than ten minutes, but when I went back out, a steady curtain of white had begun to fall.

  By the time I dropped the rent checks at the bank and turned down Tulip to deliver Clyde’s groceries—which included two bottles of rotgut vodka—a sloppy mix of snow and ice had built up at the edges of my windshield, crusted along my wiper blades. Their swish-swish noise nearly hypnotized me, which is why my heart skipped a beat when, through the whirling snow, I thought I saw a girl pushing her bicycle along the snowy edge of the street.

  With a hit of adrenaline coursing through my veins, I jammed my foot down a little too hard on the brakes. Old Sally slid right past Clyde’s place, and when I finally coaxed her to a stop so I could look for the girl, there was no sign of her. Nor, when I made my way toward the front steps, was there a single footprint or tire track in the street other than my own. She must have gone inside while I was getting the car under control.

  Clyde gave me a hard time about how long I’d been gone, and how much the bread had cost.

  “I’m on a fixed income. I can’t afford that fancy stuff with all the grains and such. Why didn’t you get plain old store brand?”

  “You’re lucky to have any given the way the shelves were picked clean."

  It took longer to drive home than it would have taken to walk, and I didn’t see the girl or her bike again, but I did see the white van in the church parking lot.

  My mother hadn’t responded, nor did she when I sent another text asking for an update. When I tried to call, it went straight to voice mail, so I left a message.

  “It’s me. Call me back. I’m beginning to worry.”

  Next, I called Leo.

  “Checks are in the bank, and everyone seems to be settled in for the storm.” We talked shop for a few minutes, then he cleared his throat somewhat ominously.

  “I had a phone call about you that I find concerning.”

  “From one of the tenants?” I tried to think who might have a problem that I hadn’t handled already and came up empty.

  “No.”

  Up until the moment he’d serenaded his longtime crush in the middle of her restaurant, most people in town had considered Leo something of a wimp. Nice enough guy—no one ever said different—but unassuming to a fault. The kind who avoided confrontation, and so when he hemmed and hawed, I knew whatever he had to say was making him uncomfortable.

  “If you were planning to quit, you’d give me notice, right?” He finally said.

  “Of course, I would.” Was I getting fired? “But I’m not planning to quit. I really like this job, and I think I’m pretty good at it. Did someone complain?”

  Seeming more comfortable, he said, “I got a call from someone saying they were reaching out on behalf of a potential employer and asked a lot of questions about you. Odd questions, too. Not ones I would ask if I was planning to hire someone.”

  Considering my job interview had consisted of him telling me I should take over from my murdered former employer, I wasn’t sure what Leo considered proper interviewing etiquette. I didn’t think he’d done a lot of hiring or firing before me, but I’d also had a few headhunters come calling during my time working for the Hastings family, and this could be another.

  “Well, don’t worry, I’m not planning on getting another job. I like the one I have.”

  Who wouldn’t? Part-time work, for nearly full-time pay because I was on call twenty-four-seven, and working for a man who went above and beyond as a landlord for his tenants. The only thing I was more thankful for than this job was that Leo hadn’t bent the rules when I’d returned to town needing a place to live. If he had allowed me to move in without two week’s pay stubs, I’d have become one of his tenants instead of a homeowner.

  The planets had aligned for me. I reassured Leo and got him off the phone. My mother still hadn’t responded, so I tried calling her again. Then I tried my dad’s phone, and David’s with the same results. Straight to voice mail. They must be out of range. My mind offered an image of them buried in a snowbank, or worse, teetering on the edge of a cliff.

  Three hours later, early darkness filtered down through storm clouds that did half the looming night’s work for it, and my parents still hadn’t arrived. The dogs had watched me cook to keep busy, and then watched me pace as if the march of the insane human was high entertainment.

  I tried to sit. Tried to watch TV but only managed a minute or two before rising to go into the front room and look out the window for the hundredth time. My phone beeped for an incoming email. If I wanted it and the weather held, I had an appointment with Madame Zephyr at one the next day. I responded and confirmed the time, then went back to the kitchen to turn the burner under my pot of stew down to a simmer.

  I turned on the maps app on my phone, calculated their route, and made sure the traffic setting was toggled on. It took a while, but by flicking my finger about a million times, I was able to scan the half of the route they’d been on since she’d called. Since every major road in the northeast showed up yellow, it wasn’t hard to figure that traffic was running very slow. But I didn’t see any crash indicators or areas of red that meant cars weren’t moving at all.

  When the phone finally rang, it was only Jacy asking for an update.

  “I’m sure they’re fine, and you know cell service is iffy when there’s a heavy storm. You wait and see, they’ll be along any minute now.”

  As much as she meant to be reassuring, her cheerful tone set my nerves twitching, so I snapped at her. And immediately regretted being a jerk.

  “I’m sorry, Jace. I didn’t mean that.”

  “Forget it. I already have. Call me the minute you hear anything, though.”

  I promised I would, and that I’d come by the shop the next day. I hadn’t told Jacy or Neena about Winston yet. It could wait until I saw them both at the same time and only had to tell the story once.

  When we hung up, I finally gave in, turned off the TV, took a warm throw and the pillows from the sofa, and settled in on the deck of the bay window to keep watch.

  It seemed like hours before I saw headlights on
the street, but it wasn’t more than ten minutes later when my parents’ car pulled into my drive.

  Blue and I met them at the door. One look at my mother’s exhausted face made me swallow the scolding I’d been about to deliver. “Are you okay?” She shrugged off her coat, and uncharacteristically let it fall to the floor.

  “I will be in a minute,” She half walked, half ran toward the bathroom while my father leaned down to give Blue’s ears a welcoming scratch.

  “You must be starving.” I bent to retrieve her coat and fold it over my arm. “And tired of driving. I made chicken stew.”

  To keep busy, I’d cooked enough for everyone and then some. My father looked worse than my mother, and even David’s face was gray with fatigue.

  “We should probably just take Blue and head on home. Looks like at least a foot already, and we’ll have to wallow our way in to get David’s truck going so we can plow out the end of the driveway.”

  “I took care of that for you.” Planning ahead helped me get through the hours of worry. “Leo’s plow guy has been keeping you cleaned out on his rounds. And I stopped in just before noon to turn up the heat so you wouldn’t have to come home to a cold house. Take off your coats, come have a hot meal, then you can go home, put your feet up, and relax.”

  “Sold.” Some of the tension left my father’s shoulders. “We’d have been here an hour ago, but we stopped to help a young woman get back on the road.”

  “Well, you’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”

  My mother had taken the time to fix herself up a little, and she looked more like herself when she returned, but before she’d sit down to eat, she reminded David to call his folks and let them know he was safe.

  “We didn’t get service until we passed the grocery store, and all your texts came in at once.”

  “I guess that explains the radio silence, then.” But she’d reminded me to let Jacy know everyone was safe, which I did while everyone settled in at the table.

  Over stew, they described their harrowing trip, and I gave them a downplayed version of the news about Winston.

  “Do you think you’re a suspect?” David cut a dumpling in half with the side of his spoon.

  Patrea and I had discussed the possibility at length, but couldn’t come with a plausible enough motive for the police to take a hard look at me.

  “I’m probably on their list, but way down at the bottom. If he’d been killed a few months ago, I might have been higher up, but I had no reason to want Winston dead. Murder investigations take a lot longer in real life than they do on TV, and if the police have questions, they know where to find me. But I’m betting Paul’s a more likely suspect than me.”

  “I worry about you living here alone.” Some of the tension lines were back around my mother’s eyes.

  “I have the security system up and running, and I can set it to send notices to your phone if that will make you feel better, but I’m not scared. Not with Molly around.”

  Mom made me set up the notices before they left, and I admit I felt better having a backup. With my family safe and sound, I pushed all thoughts of murder out of my head, went to bed early, and slept like the dead until Molly nudged me awake at a reasonable hour the next morning.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SNOW CRUNCHED UNDER my tires as I pulled down the side street where Madame Zephyr lived in the little town of Oakville.

  “Not what I expected,” I said to Molly, who sprawled across the back seat. I inspected the tidy yellow house behind the white picket fence. Well, technically behind the tips of the fence, which were the only things showing above drifted snow. “But it’s cheerful.”

  Several times during the two-hour drive, I’d talked myself into and out of turning around. What if she took one look at me and said my ghost problem would only get worse? What if they started popping out of the woodwork wherever I went?

  My hand itched to drop the car in reverse and call this a bad idea, but the curtain at the front window twitched back, and I knew she’d seen me sitting there. Now I had to go in.

  Molly watched me walk up the steps onto the front porch and ring the bell next to a small, tasteful sign announcing I was in the right place. My pulse sped up a couple of notches when the door opened almost before the final peal faded to silence.

  “Uh, hi,” I said to the woman who stood waiting. “I’m here to see—”

  “Madame Zephyr.” One dark brow arched up over twinkling brown eyes, and a gentle smile teased the corner of a bow-shaped mouth. “Come in, won’t you? It’s Everly, right? Everly Dupree from Mooselick River.”

  I stepped past so she could close the door behind me, and she looked out to see Molly scrambling from the back to the front so she could watch from the passenger’s seat.

  “Is that your dog? What’s his name?”

  Expecting a dark and smoky den, I wasn’t prepared for the interior to be as sunny and bright as the exterior. Better yet, no hint of burning sage perfumed the air.

  “Her name’s Molly. She loves to ride, so I brought her along. Is that a problem? She’s not much of a barker, so she won’t bother your neighbors.” Now that I was inside, I hoped I wasn’t about to be sent packing. Better to get this over with all at once.

  “No, it’s not a problem at all. I love dogs. You should bring her in so I can meet her properly.”

  “Don’t you have to ask … um … Madame Zephyr if it’s okay?”

  The response came in the form of a sparkling laugh. “This happens all the time. Let me introduce myself. I’m Kathleen Canton, but you can call me Kat. Most everyone does because Madame Zephyr was my grandmother. I only took the name because it meant so much to her.”

  If she hadn’t delivered the bombshell with a wry twist of the lips, I’d have felt like an idiot, but she came across as genuine and humble. I snapped my mouth shut because it had dropped open in surprise, then took her up on the offer to bring Molly inside. I needed a moment to collect my thoughts anyway, and getting the dog would give me that chance.

  Talk about mixed emotions and a certain perverse irony in both needing and dreading whatever Kat might say. Still, she seemed kind enough and didn’t give off nearly as much of the whackadoo vibe as Momma Wade.

  “Sorry, Leandra,” I offered the apology to the wind because I felt terrible about how the woman I loved came out in the comparison. “Okay, Molly, let’s do this.”

  Sleek as a seal, the dog bolted for the door when Kat opened it, nearly yanking me off my feet when her leash went taut. Out of self-preservation, I let go when I normally would have spoken sharply and held Molly to her training, and she took the stairs in a single bound.

  A quick vision of Kat being bowled over by a chocolate-colored bullet passed before my eyes as I stumbled after the dog knowing it was already too late. I heard the thump of a tail on the floor as I gained the top step.

  “Are you all right? I’m so sorry.”

  Kat laughed. “I’m fine.” By some miracle, she was still on her feet with Molly sitting placidly at her side. I closed the door behind me. “She sees, too.”

  I understood the odd statement without needing explanation.

  “She does.”

  Before I could tell the story of how Molly had come to me, Kat held up a hand for silence. “He charged her with your care before he left, and you with hers.”

  Deepening in tone, her voice shivered over me, and in the process of shedding my coat, I pulled it tighter around me instead. Uh oh, I thought, here comes the freaky stuff. And then I felt small for passing judgment on someone for doing the thing I’d come for help with.

  As if she read my thoughts, and maybe she had, Kathleen gently but firmly helped me out of my coat and led me to a kitchen that reminded me a bit of my own. Bright colors, patterned kitchenware, and lots of light made the room homey. Kat settled me in a spot at her kitchen table.

  “Chamomile and lavender, I think. Do you like tea? I find it so soothing.” She kept up a light chatter whi
le she scooped loose tea into a flower-covered pot with a smart little strainer built right in. “Do you trust me?”

  “I don’t even know you.” There was not enough chamomile in the world to stop my stomach from fluttering.

  Kat poured hot water into the pot. “But do you trust me? Don’t think about it. Let your intuition be your guide. What does your gut say?”

  Surprising myself, I said, “Yes. But I don’t know why.” I let out a breath that took the tension with it.

  “Good. Because I only want to help. Now, tell me about your ghosts.”

  So, I laid out the whole sordid story. I told her about Hudson, and then about Spencer and how I’d come to have Molly in my life. Then there was Nick and Amber and Winston. Finally, I voiced my worst fear.

  “I thought I was just the victim of a bizarre set of hauntings because of my connections and proximity to far too many dead bodies, but Amber won’t leave, and I think there’s a ghost named Felicity hanging around my friend’s shop. I felt something the other day, but I can’t be certain. What scares me is I never met Felicity, and I wasn’t even in the area when she died. So there goes my theory on hauntings.”

  The tea smelled good, but the way my stomach churned, I wasn’t sure I could keep it down. Not that I took more than a sip anyway, because once I’d begun to unload, I couldn’t seem to stop talking.

  “My grandmother wasn’t like yours. Neither of them, actually. I can’t remember any mention of seeing ghosts, and Grammie Dupree would have been tickled pink if she could. She wouldn’t have kept it a secret. So I can’t be a medium, right?”

  Kat raised an eyebrow, took a sip of tea, then rose to retrieve her phone. She tapped out a text and then laid the phone face down on the table. “You could, but I’m not getting the vibe.”

  There’s a bag of whacky in my head sometimes. That’s the only explanation I have for why I felt slightly offended by the affirmation of the one thing I’d come there hoping to hear. “I should have brought Amber with me. Then you’d see a vibe.”