Ghost Haste

by ReGina Welling

  I filled Patrea in on my conversation with Honor as we circled around the ten tables to looking for the place cards with our names on them. When we found ours on the center table, both Drew’s and mine sat slightly askew as if someone had placed them hurriedly.

  “Everly.” Lenore Cartwright burned me with a look as she seated herself to my right. It looked as if I’d be eating my salmon with a side of crow.

  “Lenore,” I responded. “I’m sorry if I was a little abrupt with you earlier. Coming here tonight wasn’t easy for me, and I’m afraid I took out my nerves on you. I’m sure you understand.”

  According to the nastiest of rumors, Lenore had married beneath her. Translation from snob code—Lenore married for love, and her husband hadn’t been wealthy. Maybe that was why she attended functions alone.

  “Better than you think.”

  I might have misjudged her. Perhaps she hated being here as much as I did.

  “How difficult it must be to keep a firm grasp on your decorum and on the coattails of your betters at the same time.”

  Or not.

  I allowed myself the satisfying mental image of slapping the smug smile off her face while injecting honey into my voice. “You do have exquisite taste in fine outerwear.”

  Tell me, darling, was that imported or domestic weasel you had on earlier?

  If I had to play the game to get information out of her, I would play it like a pro.

  With Patrea and Chris seated on the other side of Drew, we were five at a table for eight.

  Since Lenore always arrived at these functions alone, she’d be paired with another single to make the numbers work. Can’t have an odd number at dinner.

  Except that, on this night, we would.

  “It’s a shame about Winston.” I nodded to indicate the empty seat on Lenore’s other side. Had his place card been left as an oversight, a tribute, or the catalyst to start something up?

  I got my answer when the last two people arrived at their seats at about the same time the wait staff delivered our plates.

  “Won’t this be fun?” Lenore’s dry tone grated on my last nerve, but not as much as the sight of my former in-laws standing across the table from me. I caught the look on Patrea’s face and figured our thoughts ran along the same lines.

  No way would this end well.

  Drew caught Thurston’s eye, held that contact as he leaned close to speak quietly in my ear. “Still want to fight those wild horses?” As always, his voice had the power to excite and soothe at the same time. It was uncanny.

  “Watch me.”

  He didn’t really have to watch me because I didn’t have to do anything for the drama to ramp up. Tippy took care of that all by herself.

  “I won’t sit here with her,” she said to Thurston. “Do something.”

  Patrea pushed back her chair, prepared to stand up, and go into scary lawyer mode, but I caught her eye and shook my head. “Don’t.” This was my battle to fight or not to fight as the case may be.

  “I’m sure Madeleine has spun a story to her friends that put me in the very worst possible light. Now, like the proverbial bad penny, I’ve popped back up, and she thinks she can make me live up to her lies by goading me into a public display.”

  The throbbing vein in Tippy’s forehead was a pretty good indicator I’d pegged her correctly.

  “That,” I said, letting my gaze move from Tippy to Thurston and back again, kept my voice perfectly even and low enough not to travel past it’s intended target, “will not happen. I have nothing to prove. So, you can sit down and eat your crab cake, Madeleine, or you can leave in a snit. Your call.”

  Without waiting for a decision, I turned back to Lenore. “As I was saying, it’s such a shame about Winston. Did you know him well?”

  Under the table, Drew’s warm hand grasped the fist I’d kept clenched in my lap during the confrontation. The heat and the strength that flowed from him had my fingers uncurling until they interlocked with his.

  There’s nothing stronger than a man who knows when to step in front of a woman and when to stand beside her. I knew right then that I would break my no-men rule for him.

  Oh, who was I kidding? I already had.

  “Well enough to have my own ideas about who killed him.” Now, Lenore had my full attention. Amid the clinking of cutlery and the hum of conversation in the room, Tippy and Thurston decided they had somewhere more important to be.

  “By all means, Lenore. Don’t keep us in suspense.” Patrea gestured with a forkful of roasted sweet potato. When she saw me looking at her, she shot me an approving grin.

  “I visited Winston’s office a week … no, a week and a half ago, to talk to him about … a minor legal matter.”

  Or a major amount of lost money, I thought.

  “When I got there—at the appointed time, I might add—he was with another client, and that harpy who works for him told me I’d have to wait. Dreadfully rude.”

  While she denounced Winston and his staff for lacking any understanding of basic manners, Lenore dug a silver-plated toothpick out of her purse and proceeded to pick a bit of crab from between her teeth. I bit my lip to keep from smiling and encouraged her to elaborate.

  “Punctuality,” Lenore continued, “is one virtue Winston did not possess. Nor did he observe proper office decorum. The man frittered away a good ten minutes of my time to participate in a shouting match with Paul Hastings.”

  “With Paul? What were they shouting about?”

  “Are you suggesting I’m the type to listen in on private conversations?”

  With her ear pressed up against the door … or a glass if she could find one and there hadn’t been a receptionist to see her snooping.

  “Of course not, Lenore. You’re the soul of discretion.” I actually kept a straight face as I said it, too.

  “In any case, Paul did most of the shouting, and he threatened to kill Winston on his way out. When I heard the news, I assume he’d made good on the threat.”

  Patrea pressed for more details. “Paul actually said he would kill Winston? In those exact words?”

  “ 'I could kill you for this.' That is what he said, and that is all I know about the subject.” And it was the last she’d speak of it.

  The rest of the evening dragged by, and in the car on the way home, I felt compelled to defend myself.

  “My life is not usually like this, you know.” Except maybe it was. Have I not said I was a bad bet in the dating department? Surely Drew had figured that much out for himself by now. “I don’t make a habit of attending ritzy functions just so I can yell at people. I’m more of a stay-at-home, Friday-game-night type of person.”

  Just great, Everly. Way to make yourself sound appealing to the guy you’re mysteriously interested in dating. I hadn’t examined the reasons why Drew managed to get past my carefully mounted emotional walls so quickly, and now, there probably wasn’t a need for it. He hadn’t said much since we’d begun the drive home.

  And I couldn’t seem to shut up.

  Finally, I chanced a look at him. “Are you laughing at me?”

  “Not at you.”

  “Well, you’re clearly not laughing with me. I don’t think any of this is funny.” Heat prickled over my face, the curse of being a redhead. I’d embarrassed myself by losing control of my emotions in public, and wasn’t too far from it happening again in private.

  Drew took his eyes off the road long enough to look at me. He didn’t say anything for the next few miles but pulled off the highway at the rest stop and parked.

  Turning in his seat to give me his full attention, he asked, “Why are you so upset?”

  “Because I made a fool out of myself.” I did not add in front of you, but the thought was in my head.

  A beat of silence fell between us.

  “Look at me.” Drew pried my fingers off the purse I clutched on my lap. Gently, he chafed warmth back into them. My neck felt so tight that my back muscles ached from holding so much tens
ion, and I had trouble turning my head. “Everly, please.”

  He wasn’t laughing now. The way the light fell, it cast shadows over half his face, turned the ordinary planes and angles to works of art carved by a deft hand. “Look at me.”

  Low and deep and sonorous, his voice was hypnotizing. I looked, and my breath caught. I didn’t want to want him. I didn’t want to want anyone.

  Could be a front. Men lie and cheat. I knew that firsthand. Drew might do the same. My inner voice didn’t even sound convinced, and I let the misgivings go as quickly as they surfaced.

  There was no other sound but the rustling of his coat as he cupped my face and moved closer. I leaned in to close the gap, mingled my breath with his, and sighed into the kiss.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “YOU WANT THE good news or the bad news?” Amber yelled from outside the bathroom door instead of sticking her head through, which I appreciated. My morning had disappeared in a blur of phone calls—most of them from Martha in a premature panic over some minor details with the Valentine’s Day event.

  Once I had Martha as settled as Martha ever got, I called Officer Bassett to fill her in on what I’d learned from Honor and Lenore. She asked a lot of questions and made me repeat the information several times, then we talked a little bit about Albert’s case before the call ended.

  “Bad news first.”

  “I swung over to the motel just in time to catch Reva checking out.”

  Pushing the mascara wand back into the tube, I said, “I asked for the bad news first.” Finished with my makeup, I walked back into the bedroom to find Amber hovering over my bed.

  “When she pulled out of the parking lot, she turned toward town. I think she’s headed back here.”

  I sighed. “I guess that qualifies. What’s the good news?”

  “Cold snap’s ending. It’s a balmy thirty-five degrees already, and temps are expected to climb another four or five degrees this afternoon.”

  “Did you hear that, Molly? We’re having a heatwave, and that means an extra-long walk today. And by the time we get home, maybe Reva will be out of our lives for good.” I knew it wouldn’t be that easy, but a girl can hope, right?

  That hope sent me to my closet for a warm coat, hat, and mittens, and my fingers fumbled while clipping on Molly’s leash. My thumbs might not have been pricking, but my gut knew something wicked was coming my way.

  “I’ll stand watch. If she shows up, I’ll come and find you,” Amber promised.

  Molly didn’t care why we set off down the sidewalk at a brisk pace, she was just happy to stretch her legs after such a long period of cold weather. Muscles bunching under her sleek, chocolate brown coat, and tongue lolling happily to one side, she enjoyed the pure pleasure of the moment. I envied her the ability.

  I felt as though I’d been running away from or toward something ever since the day I moved back to town, but never more than at that moment. With an unbroken stretch of sidewalk in front of me, my faithful dog by my side, I settled into the motion, letting my breathing become the metronome for the pace.

  Freed from directing my body, my mind cleared, and my focus sharpened as I looked for a pattern in everything that had happened since the moment my world shattered.

  Paul and Reva. Paul and Winston. Both combinations spelled betrayal, and both had Paul in common, so I put him at the center of a widening circle of events and tried to find a path that would lead to Winston’s death, Paul missing, and Reva in Mooselick river.

  In retrospect, I’d been blinded by the fairytale romance of being swept off my feet by the handsome prince. But all castles double as fortresses, and stone walls can enclose as well as protect.

  Under the guise of protection, Paul could easily have been setting me up from the beginning. Pilfering money from the foundation's coffers for … well, that detail was hazy since he had plenty of money of his own. Probably needed it to support Reva in style.

  When the burn of anger threatened to cloud my thoughts, I forced it back down, listened to the rhythm of my feet on the sidewalk until my emotions settled, then went back to dispassionately contemplating Paul’s crimes. I meant to lay out my thinking to Jody Bassett and the detective whose name I could never remember, and let them figure out who killed Winston.

  As far as ghosts went, he’d been a relatively low-key annoyance, and as long as someone solved his murder, he could go into the light. I figured I’d do my part by cooperating fully with Basset and company—let them do the legwork on this one.

  To that end, I went back to thinking through the timeline of events. If not for a suspicious investor, I might still be living a lie. I owed that guy a basket of muffins or something. Or maybe not, since those suspicions had caused Paul to spring into action and come up with a plan to make me the scapegoat.

  It all fit. The prenuptial forgery—unnecessary for any other reason than to make me look desperate—the staged discovery of his betrayal. He underestimated me there. Assumed I wouldn’t question the agreement or remember enough about it to notice the subtle changes. He certainly hadn’t counted on Patrea and her handwriting expert.

  With me cleared, or mostly cleared, of suspicion in the misappropriation of funds, someone else would have to take the blame. Enter Winston.

  Who better to point the finger at than the attorney/finance manager with a reputation for losing people’s money? The frame job wouldn’t be that difficult. All Paul had to do was forge a few documents to prove Winston had access to foundation funds, and bam! Instant scapegoat.

  Take it a step further and kill Winston so he can’t prove his innocence, and the case was locked.

  And that’s where the theory began to break down. The place and time of Winston’s death made absolutely no sense in the narrative. Staging the death to look like suicide, complete with a note confessing to the crime, would have put Paul in the clear. Shooting Winston in his own storage room might even have worked. Paul could have claimed he came upon a theft in progress. There’d been a scuffle, and in the middle of protecting his property, the gun went off.

  An entirely plausible story if Paul had stuck around to tell it. Why didn’t he?

  Where would Paul go if he’d done something too horrible to face?

  These were questions I should have had enough information to answer. I had spent several years with the man, but with evidence mounting against him, I didn’t think I’d known my husband at all.

  At about the same time I reached that epically unhelpful conclusion, Amber popped up in front of me. “Am I good, or what? Nailed that prediction perfectly. Reva showed up at your place.”

  “Is she still there? I’ve had a minute to think things over, and I have questions she might be able to answer.” I turned Molly and headed back toward home with Amber zipping along beside me.

  “She’s there. Or she was a few seconds ago. Banging on the door, ringing the doorbell, yelling for you to come out because she knows you’re in there. It’s quite a scene. I expect someone will call the cops if she keeps it up.”

  Molly needed no urging to step up her pace when I increased mine to a jog. We’d gone a fair distance while I settled on a theory of the crime, and I hoped she’d still be there when I got back.

  The one time I actually wanted to see her, she was gone. Talk about Murphy’s luck.

  To compensate for the abbreviated walk, I played ball with Molly off the back porch until she was done, and followed up with one of her other favorite activities.

  All girl, Molly loved a good blow-out. She stood patiently while I toweled off most of the melting snow, and did her happy wiggle when I plugged in the blow dryer.

  Finally, dry and happy, she circled several times and settled down on her bed for a well-earned nap while I headed to the kitchen to throw some veggies and broth in a pot.

  I’d lost track of time when I heard the front door open and close.

  “I’m finished over on Tulip.” Comfortable in my house as if he were family, David Barrington walke
d into my kitchen and helped himself to a glass of water. “I added two inches of rigid foam, sealed up a few air gaps in the foundation, and installed a sensor with an alarm that will go off if the temps near the pipes dip below freezing. It shouldn’t be a problem again, but if it is, we’ll know ahead of time.”

  “Fantastic. There’s vegetable soup on the stove if you’re hungry. Or I can just cut you a check for the work right now.” Since the man never turned down food, I went back to what I’d been doing when he arrived.

  Instead of pulling a bowl out of the cabinet, David hunkered down next to me. “What are you doing?”

  It was a valid question, I supposed. “I’m looking under the stove.” Since I had the side of my face pressed to the floor and a flashlight in my hand, the answer should have been self-explanatory.

  “I can see that; did you lose something?”

  “Misplaced is more like it. I’ve torn the entire downstairs apart, and now I’m reduced to looking in the more unlikely places.” The envelope from Albert was still missing, but I had turned up the notebook from the tower room where Catherine had liked to sit with her camera.

  “For?” David prompted.

  “An envelope I had the day I moved in. Mom said she left it on the kitchen counter, but it’s gone, and I’ve searched everywhere.”

  Including behind the refrigerator, and now, under the range. “I’m running out of places to look.” While I got back to my feet, I noticed David had gone quiet, and when I looked at him, he had a funny expression on his face.

  “I’m sorry.” Pushing off from where he’d been leaning against the counter, he walked past me to the free-standing Hoosier cabinet on the opposite side of the kitchen.

  “This is all my fault.” He reached up and felt behind the arched trim that ran across the top. “I didn’t know it was important.” When his fingers found what they’d been searching for, he pulled out the envelope. It had several keys scattered on it.

  “You remember we were sorting through all those keys on the first day? There were a few that I knew didn’t go to anything, and I just used the envelope and stashed them up there out of the way. I intended to go back and get them later, but it was a busy time, and I forgot. I’m sorry, Ev.”