~ Lydia M. Child
“Hey, Mom!” Paxton opened and closed the fridge in Petal Pushers’ kitchen but ignored the healthy stuff his mom kept there. He rummaged through the cabinets for junk food. “Sweet.” The bag of chocolate covered pretzels would do the trick.
“What’s up?” Darci trotted down the steps and into the kitchen. She tousled his wavy hair as he poured himself a glass of chocolate milk. “I was straightening up when I heard you holler for me.”
“I wasn’t sure if you knew there’s a customer out front.” That was all the conversation he could manage before he dug into his afterschool snack.
“Huh, that’s funny. I didn’t even hear the bells on the front door jingle.” Darci set a napkin in front of Paxton and hurried to the front of the shop.
She returned a couple minutes later, pulled out a chair, and took a seat beside Paxton, commandeering a couple of his chocolate pretzels.
“They must have left. Who was it?” She popped a piece in her mouth. She would never understand why some people took up heroin and cocaine when chocolate and pastry were just as addictive.
“Don’t know.” Paxton shrugged. “Just some old lady.”
“Coming from you, she could be anywhere between twenty-five and two hundred. What’d she look like?”
“Well,” he began, scrunching his forehead as he chewed, “she was old. I guess about the same age as you and Charlotte, or Grandma.”
In times like this, Darci sympathized with Homer Simpson’s habit of choking the living daylights out of Bart.
“She had on a long dark dress, and her hair was stuck up on top of her head like the Mennonite ladies we buy fudge and sweet potatoes from.” Paxton took a swig of milk, then wiped his mouth on the back of his hand rather than this napkin. “But her clothes weren’t like that, ‘cause she had a pin thing on the front of her dress, and I know Mennonites aren’t allowed to wear jewelry.”
Darci struggled to swallow the bite in her mouth, which had suddenly gone dry. The clothes and old-fashioned hairdo were one thing, but the broach was the real clincher. She took a gulp from Paxton’s glass, then hid her expression behind a napkin until she composed herself. No one mentioned the Ghost Lady in front of the nine-year-old, afraid of scaring the holy crap out of him. His imagination ran full throttle most of the time and she didn’t want him to think boogeymen waited around each corner.
“You’re right, the Mennonites don’t wear any jewelry.” Paxton beamed at her acknowledgement, his smile doing much more to calm Darci’s nerves than the milk had. “So what was this lady doing? Looking at the display table or the houseplants?”
“Nope, she was beside Daisy’s cage when I came in, then she went over toward the porthole and stopped. It was kinda weird. She turned to the wall and rubbed it with her hand.” Paxton shook his head and grabbed another pretzel.
“That does sound sort of peculiar.” Darci thought for a minute. “Did she say anything to you?”
“Nope.”
“And did you say anything to her, or just stand there gawking?” Darci asked.
“Mom,” Paxton drawled out in three exasperated syllables that bordered on a whine, but not quite. His mother did not allow whining. He rolled his eyes, which he usually got away with. “She didn’t talk to me so I didn’t bother her by talkin’ to her, either. I don’t even think she noticed I was there, ‘cause she didn’t look at me or anything.”
“Now I know you were raised to have better manners than that.” Darci couldn’t believe she was giving her son a lecture over the politically correct way to treat a ghost. She just couldn’t excuse rudeness, poltergeist or not. “You really should have said hello to the lady before you scampered in here to eat. Think you can remember that next time?”
Paxton sighed, then responded, a singsong lilt in his voice. “Yes ma’am. I should say hello or something to people I don’t even know to be polite before I have a snack.”
“Well, yeah.” Darci smirked, knowing she’d used the same tone on her own mother as a child. “The shop is kind of like an extension of our home, and if you walk in our house or in here and see anybody, just please say hello next time. Hmmm?”
“Okay, I get it,” he said. “Can I go outside now?”
“Sure, Pax, as soon as you clean up your snack mess.”
When the back door shut behind Paxton, Darci went to stand by Daisy’s cage. The parakeet hopped on the bars beside the door, bobbling her head, expecting Darci to let her out. Unable to resist, Darci pulled the door open and extended her index finger. “Step up.” The little bird hopped on, then ran up Darci’s arm and perched on her shoulder.
Darci took a few steps toward the round porthole window, trying to retrace the Ghost Lady’s steps. She stopped and turned toward the wall to look for anything unusual. An empty sunflower yellow wall stared back at her. What would attract a ghost’s attention? Daisy chirped as Darci reached out to touch the smooth plaster the way Paxton’s ‘old lady’ had earlier. She found nothing out of the ordinary.
She wasn’t afraid of who or whatever caused these inexplicable episodes, she just found them unnerving. Even Wade couldn’t find a logical reason for the cold spots, especially when the air conditioning was off and it was ninety-eight degrees outside. Three people-herself, Charlotte, and now Paxton-couldn’t possibly imagine seeing the same figure in a dark outfit from another century, with the same shiny broach pinned to her chest. This wasn’t likely to be a prank, not when a pregnant woman worked here; everybody in town knew Jimbo would stomp their asses for even thinking about bothering Charlotte, now and before baby Cole was born. And there was the matter of nearly dead plants miraculously turning into the picture of health overnight, thanks apparently to a ghostly green thumb. No way could any stretch of the imagination explain that.
Her curiosity piqued, Darci found it difficult to concentrate on much else the rest of the day. Luckily, her job didn’t involve sharp objects, heavy equipment, or mathematical equations, all of which she would have done damage with in her distracted state. While she put together some autumn wreaths, her thoughts continually drifted back to the image of the Ghost Lady. Who was she and what sort of unfinished business made her appear in the shop? The climax of good horror shows always revealed what wrong needed righting or who needed to be avenged so the spirit could finally cross to the other side, go into the light, or whatever it took to get them to stop haunting people.
Before locking up for the night, she dipped into her filing cabinet and took out the folder labeled ‘Deed’. A quick perusal showed Walter H. Brown and his wife Adelaide as original owners of the building that was now Petal Pushers. They deeded the home over to their son William in 1911, and the house stayed in the Brown family until Darci bought it.
She swung by the library on her way home, hoping to find information about the people who used to live in her flower shop. The library stayed open until seven that night, so by the time she drove across town and got Paxton situated in the kid’s section, she had a little over an hour. Mrs. Greeley, the librarian, lent a hand, seizing a large book from the genealogy shelf to find cemetery information on the Browns. It listed Walter H. and Adelaide Brown buried in Sweet Grove Cemetery in Lisman, Kentucky. The birth and death dates inscribed on the tombstone were in the book. Born in 1857, Walter died in 1912 while Addie lived from 1864 until 1941.
Darci jotted down the dates while Mrs. Greeley retrieved another volume from the genealogy section, this one devoted to the Brown family history. The index pointed them to a couple pages that gave Walter and Addie’s date of marriage as 1879 and information about their three kids. The librarian made copies of those while Darci looked through microfilm for obituaries or articles with information on the former occupants.
Her main objective for this research was to find out who, if anyone, had died in the house, since that would probably be who was doing the haunting. She hoped she wouldn’t discover any murders or violent crimes committed on her property, even though it wo
uld have occurred before she was born. From the cemetery records, she knew three Brown children had lived to raise families of their own. While that didn’t rule them out, it made them less likely. As far as she could tell, those five people had been the only ones to live in the house.
Time was running short. When Darci found Addie’s obit, she pushed a button on the machine and watched it spit out a copy from the local newspaper’s microfilm. She couldn’t find one for Walter’s 1912 death. Mrs. Greeley said that wasn’t unusual, since people didn’t always have death announcements back then. Darci accidentally hit the wrong button when she was finished, then punched rewind and stop. It had been a few years since she’d used one of these things, after all.
When the film jarred to a stop, a headline caught her attention. ‘Chamber of Commerce Names Walt Brown Businessman of the Year’. She skimmed the first few lines before she noticed the picture to the right that went with the article. She glossed over the name of the presenter, not giving two hoots in hell who he was, then read Walt and Addie’s names in the caption. She stabbed the print button, her eyes fluttering back to the picture while the old machine buzzed and hummed.
Dressed in a coat and hat, Walter was a tall man with a warm smile barely visible under his bushy mustache. Adelaide stood beside him wearing a long skirt and white blouse with dozens of buttons down the front. Kindness emanated from her face, even in the old black and white picture. Though she couldn’t tell what color Addie’s eyes were, they danced above her smile. A large hat balanced atop her hairdo, no doubt secured with one of those horrendous hatpins like her great-grandmother used to display on the dresser.
Closing time forced Darci to put away the microfilm and turn off the machine. She stacked her printouts with the Man of the Year article on top. As she straightened the stack, her eyes locked on something she hadn’t noticed before. She’d been trying to tell if the woman in the photo looked like the one she’d seen in her shop, but she just wasn’t sure. Now, with her eyes glued on Addie Brown’s silky blouse, there wasn’t a doubt in her mind. The unmistakable broach pinned to the left of her placket proved she and the Ghost Lady were one and the same.
“Are you alright, Ma’am?” Mrs. Greeley asked. “You’re so pale, and you look startled.”
“No, I’m fine, thanks.” Darci pulled herself together Scarlett O’Hara style, silently vowing to think about it later. “I just swallowed my gum,” she said, the only logical reason she could think of to explain her expression. She had no intention of telling the nice librarian that she’d just found a picture of the dead woman whose ghost haunted her flower store, miraculously healed dead plants, helped her dodge a bullet to the head, entertained her parakeet, and kept down the cooling bill with bursts of cold air. She hated to lie, but this little white one kept her from sounding like the biggest Brazil nut in the fruitcake.
After supper that night, Darci took a nice hot bubble bath and slipped into her nightgown, chenille housecoat, and cushy slippers before treading back downstairs to read through the stack of information she’d copied. She’d tried to keep her mind off the photo while she ate, but kept catching herself staring at the papers piled on the side table. Three times she’d opened her mouth to tell Wade what she found, then stuffed food in it instead when she remembered how he’d made fun of her for believing in ghosts. No, she thought it best to wait until she read over the articles and had a chance to mull things over before telling him about it. Wade sat in the next room watching some kind of sports crap on television, something sure to keep him too busy to catch her poring over the papers.
Darci put the stack on the dining room table and went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. She put the filter in the coffeemaker, then stopped. She might need something a bit stronger to settle her nerves. The Ghost Lady didn’t scare her, but until this afternoon she’d sort of expected some logical explanation to turn up. Undisputable evidence of an otherworldly being that existed in Petal Pushers proved a tad bit unsettling.
She lifted a wine glass from the rack above the kitchen sink and placed it beside the coffeepot. Booze or caffeine, how would she ever decide? In spite her supper an hour before, stress made her stomach rumble for something sugary. Wade had brought home a dozen assorted Krispy Kremes, so she put two on a plate. At least that was an easy decision. Coffee went with donuts, but she hankered for the calming effect of red wine. Her eyes darted from donuts to coffee to the wine glass, then fell on the liquor cabinet.
She returned to the dining room carrying the plate of donuts and Kahlua-laced coffee.
Determined to take her time on each document, she started with the obituary. It should provide the most information, plus she hoped to get more Kahlua in her system before she caught another glimpse of the photograph. She read Adelaide ‘Addie’ Brown’s death announcement straight through, paused to wash down a bite of cruller with a sip of coffee, then reread it more carefully.
“Aha, I knew it! She died in the shop.” The obit said Addie died in her home, the same building that now housed Petal Pushers, from injuries due to a falling accident. “No mention of suspicious circumstances or an investigation, just a fatal fall, a common accident for elderly people. Thank God she wasn’t murdered. No telling what I’d have running around behind the counter if that were the case.”
“What Hon? You say something?” Wade called from the living room.
“No, I’m just reading,” she answered. A second later she heard him cheering at the game, her babble forgotten. Darci yelled back at theater screens, so it made perfect sense that she would talk back to the books she read. Especially novels by Stephen King or Dean Koontz. She only hoped things wouldn’t get as eerie as one of their plots. So far, the Ghost Lady seemed no worse than Casper with a green thumb and she sincerely hoped it stayed that way.
Back to the obit. Addie died at the ripe old age of seventy-seven, preceded in death by Walter nearly thirty years before. It listed her three children along with their state and city of residence. All had moved away; William lived in Tennessee, Virginia moved to Indiana with her husband, and George lived two hours away in Louisville. The article ended with ‘Mrs. Brown was a member of the First Baptist church, active in the Botanical Society of Webster County, and aided many women of this fine county by acting as midwife.’
“So Addie was in a botanical group.” Darci guessed that’s where she learned to work miracles on plants. The midwife thing struck her as pretty neat, too. She never really gave it much thought before, but knew her grandparents were born in their homes instead of hospitals. She guessed it made sense that midwives would deliver as many babies as doctors in small rural areas, especially during that time period.
The next few pages were copies from the Brown family genealogy, the librarian having Xeroxed everything pertaining to Walter and Addie. Walter, the third generation of his family born in Virginia, migrated to Kentucky as a small boy when his parents received a land grant. Adelaide McGee’s parents came from Ireland, then settled in North Carolina for a couple years before they moved on to Kentucky, where Addie was born. Both Walter and Addie had long lists of brothers and sisters, another thing common for a time when so many children died during infancy and those who survived helped on the family farm.
The genealogy went back five generations on Walter’s side, but dealt primarily with the Browns rather than Addie’s McGee line. Darci thought it best to focus more on Addie’s ancestors and descendants, since it was her spirit that haunted Petal Pushers. The genealogy listed birth, death, and marriage dates for Walt and Addie’s three children, their spouses’ names, and grandchildren born before the genealogy’s compilation in 1952. She highlighted those names with a green marker.
At last she came to the ‘Man of the Year’ headline and Addie’s picture. Darci took a bathroom break, refilled her coffee and Kahlua, and then went to work nibbling her second Krispy Kreme as she studied the article. She covered the photograph with a notepad as she chewed, to put off looking at it a little longer.
The piece talked mainly about Walt Brown and his achievements at the county’s first insurance agency, the business that won him the Chamber of Commerce’s award for businessman of the year. At least when Addie became a widow, Walt’s profession meant he undoubtedly left her beneficiary to a sizeable life insurance policy. Widowhood was Darci’s greatest fear, and she was relieved to know Adelaide Brown had been well provided for after her husband’s death.
The section about Walt’s personal life called Addie a devoted wife and mother. That paragraph also named their only child at that time, Willie, and the family dog, which kind of shows the importance of women and children in the later part of the nineteenth century. When the reporter described the Brown’s home, he mentioned a stunning garden that encompassed most of the yard. Attributing it to Mrs. Brown’s interests in botanicals, he said it rivaled the beauty of those he’d seen when traveling in England, which had included tours of the palace grounds.
Darci soaked in the information. “Wow.” Addie loved botany. The devotion it would have taken to fill the lawn with well-maintained plants during her lifetime, before the invention of gas powered lawnmowers and Miracle Gro, was really amazing.
“You say something, Hon,” Wade called again, still perched in front of the television. “Or are you still reading?”
“Still reading, Babe. Don’t let me distract you from the game.” Darci rolled her eyes, but grinned.
“Okay. Enjoy your book.” Three seconds passed before Darci heard him jump off the couch. “Oh, yeah, that’s the way to do it!” Apparently, his team scored a basket, touchdown, homerun, or whatever the hell they did to make points. Darci never understood the male infatuation with watching grown men chase balls all over the place.
She moved the notepad off the black and white photograph and drained the last drop of caffeinated Kahlua, then scrutinized Addie’s face. Coincidences became apparent. Both mothers spent their lives in Webster County, and she and Addie shared an obsession with plants and flowers. Darci worked in the same building Addie and Walt called home. Staring at the photograph, she noticed they both had dark hair, though that seemed to be the only physical resemblance. Their builds were quite different, Addie being slender and petite while Darci, well, she enjoyed good food more than fitting into tiny clothes.
Poison, Perennials, and a Poltergeist (The Petal Pushers Mystery Series) Page 15