The Ghosts of Landover Mystery Series Box Set

by Etta Faire

  “Well, it’s a lovely story either way,” I said, making Justin smile at me as the older couple skated on still arguing over the gruesome details.

  Justin was a man of few words, but I was really enjoying the quiet way he communicated, especially since I lived with a loud-mouthed ghost of an ex-husband.

  We skated by Parker Blueberg, who was off to the side holding onto his three-year-old son’s back as they shuffled slowly along the ice. The kid could barely move he was so bundled up, but he sported a wild grin and rosy chubby cheeks.

  “Thanks for inviting us,” Parker said when he saw me watching him. He had his hood down, and his thick sandy brown hair was flaked with snow. He smiled just enough to show he probably wore his retainer a lot more than I did; perfectly straight, white teeth.

  Justin pulled me in tighter.

  “Of course,” I said as we skated over to him. “You’re the newbies in town. And this is the best entertainment we have here in January. Cheapest too. Okay, it’s the only entertainment. Sorry.”

  “I’m always looking for cheap entertainment for the kids,” he said. “Mostly because I’m also still looking for a job.”

  I turned to Justin. “Parker was a personal trainer back in Chicago.”

  “No kidding.” Justin puffed out his chest. “What do you bench?”

  “I mostly taught spin class and yoga.”

  “That’s bike riding, right? You taught bike riding to grown-ups.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Parker said.

  “Two-fifty,” Justin replied, still puffing out his chest, which made me wonder if he’d exhaled yet. “I bench two-fifty.”

  “If I hear of anything, I’ll let you know,” I said and skated ahead, leaving the testosterone competition behind.

  Jackson appeared by my side. “Well, they certainly are impressive, aren’t they.” He motioned toward the men behind us. “You don’t often see two jocks using almost complete sentences at the same time.”

  I hit a slippery patch and struggled to catch my footing again. “Go away,” I muttered under my breath to the annoying ghost hovering by me. My ex-husband’s coloring seemed particularly pale against the snow surrounding us, his full beard and thin frame fading into the background. I looked around before saying anything else, just to make sure no one was watching me. I tried to avoid looking crazy in public, whenever possible. And no one else could see the ghosts I talked to. “You promised you wouldn’t go with me on dates. You’re being a date killer again.”

  “I’m actually here on official business, not as a date killer. Although you seem to be your own biggest date killer right now.”

  I turned to him, hands on my hips.

  “Come on, Carly doll,” he said, raising an almost transparent eyebrow at me. “Why did you invite Parker and the kids along on a date with Justin?”

  “I thought the kids would like this, and… I don’t need to answer that. Justin and I are happy. What’s your official business?”

  “That boating accident they were talking about. One of the partiers is coming home with us.”

  “Of course he is. Let me guess. It wasn’t an accident.”

  “It’s a she. And no. She’s absolutely certain it wasn’t, but she doesn’t remember what happened. She’s been waiting a long time for a strong medium to come to this part of Landover Lake so she could finally figure things out. It’s why she haunts here. Since 1957.”

  I nodded, but my face felt oddly frozen when I moved it. I was ready to head inside, defrost, and get some hot chocolate.

  Jackson continued. “She’s also got strong memories from 1954.” His voice took a sing-songy lilt to it. He knew that was going to be the kicker. A ghost with memories from 1954 was too enticing for me to pass up. I’d recently started a keepsake box full of articles and information from 1954 and a little bit of 1955, the years when the strange growling crows with large yellowed beaks had taken over Potter Grove, apparently dive-bombing victims’ skulls seemingly at random. They killed five people and seriously wounded several more before leaving the area as mysteriously as they came.

  A few people believed they were back. I was one of them.

  “You don’t need to convince me,” I said to my ex. “I was already going to do it.”

  Justin skated up and took my hand again. “You were already going to do what?” he asked, turning his head to the side. Justin knew I was a medium. He knew I talked to ghosts at my haunted house, and I could tell he was slowly starting to believe that maybe they weren’t just pretend friends. But I never told him they sometimes followed me around or that I more than occasionally helped them solve a murder case or two. I needed to ease people into my crazy.

  “Nothing,” I said, pulling my hat off so I could adjust it over my blondish-brown curls in a way that would hopefully frame my face in something that looked cute and not clownish. “You ready to go?”

  The wind picked up, blowing my hat off my fingers and sending it sliding along the ice. Of course this also made my hair fly out in all directions, and I struggled to press it back down to normal-poof as I skated after my hat. My nose dripped and my ears stung, and I realized after a while that I was skating with my tongue out, but I’d paid way too much for that cute hat to let it go that easily. It landed under the tree limb, and I bent down to grab it. Parker did too, and our hands touched. Technically, our gloves.

  “Sorry,” I said, pulling my hand back like he’d assaulted me.

  Parker smiled and handed me my hat. “Thanks again. We had a great time.”

  “You too.” I said. “I mean, me too. I had a great time too.”

  “Oh my. Awkward,” my ex-husband said, popping in to commentate. I ignored the annoying ghost. “Don’t mind me,” Jackson continued. “I only wonder if your boyfriend is watching this completely natural exchange with the man you invited on your date.”

  As soon as Parker left, I glared at Jackson. “There is nothing wrong here. I only invited this man to this lake because I told Mildred I would help her grandson acclimate to the area.” I tried to remember if I actually said that to Mildred or not.

  “Tell yourself whatever you want,” Jackson replied.

  The wind pummeled my face again but this time I heard a low, humming kind of a noise along with it. It lifted along the breeze, an almost growling sound. Like nothing I’d ever heard before, different than the growls at the bed and breakfast months ago. It was almost human sounding.

  I looked all around, searching the branches overhead for the birds I knew must be there, a chill running up my spine. When the wind died down, I covered my skull and shushed my ex-husband even though he wasn’t talking and listened intently to the wind again. But I didn’t hear anything else.

  It had to have been my imagination. I was just being paranoid. Still, I quickly caught up to Justin who was sitting on the bench, putting his boots on, oblivious to the hat hunt and the birds growling. I scooted in close and grabbed his hand faster than I’d intended.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  “That’s what we’re doing, right?” He shrugged. “You gonna change out of your skates?”

  “Nope,” I replied, not even listening to my mother’s nagging voice echoing through my head about how she knew I wasn’t going to take care of those expensive skates. I stood up and wobbled across the snow and dirt in them.

  Justin didn’t say much as we trudged over to his truck while we held hands, me trying to make the pace as fast as possible in a clunky pair of ice skates as I checked all the branches along the way. When we reached the parking lot, he looked back at the makeshift skating rink set up along the ice behind us, his eyes wet from the wind. “Spin class and yoga,” he said, shaking his head.

  I looked back too just in time to see a very large crow flying across the rink toward the bench where Justin and I had just been sitting. I couldn’t move. I just stood, holding onto the truck door, staring at the tree. The bird looked completely normal, yet something seemed off.


  “You okay?” Justin asked, starting the truck, motioning for me to get in.

  Squinting into the wind, I caught the eye of another black bird. This one was in a higher branch when our eyes met. A bigger one. It seemed to be looking for me too, with a surprisingly human glare, and a thick yellowed beak.

  Chapter 2

  Accidents Happen, Sometimes on Purpose

  I snuggled into the crook of Justin’s arm and tried to focus on the superhero movie streaming on my flatscreen. Justin smelled like soap mixed with sex appeal, and he was wearing the dark gray sweater I told him I couldn’t resist. But still, the only thing I could think about was my ex-husband and the partier we’d just taken home with us.

  They were here somewhere, watching and waiting, probably tapping on their ghost watches.

  Rex sat quietly at our feet. My dog was finally getting used to my boyfriend. He used to bark at Justin a lot, but it only happened every once in a while now.

  “Did I tell you,” Justin said, leaning over toward me. “You look beautiful tonight?”

  “It’s completely okay if you repeat yourself. I hear that’s a sign of extreme intelligence.”

  He brushed a strand of my curls away from my face and moved in for a kiss. His face was wonderfully scratchy and soft all at the same time. He ran a hand along the back of my neck as he pressed his lips over mine and a tingle ran all the way to my toes. I was just starting to get into it when I opened my eyes for a split second. Jackson was hovering directly above us.

  I closed my eyes again and tried to ignore him. He’s just looking for attention, and if you give it to him, things will only continue down this path, I told myself like I was dealing with a toddler and not a 50-something-year-old ghost.

  I peeked again. He was still there. The man was bound and determined to break Justin and me up, again. Twelve years ago, I broke up with Justin to date and marry Jackson, and it wasn’t about to happen again, not that you could date and marry a dead guy. Or that I would want to.

  Justin stopped kissing me and pulled away. “Is something wrong?’ he asked.

  “No. It’s nothing,” I replied, mostly for the benefit of the hovering ghost.

  “It’s your ex again, huh?” he said. He looked around my living room. “I think I like hanging out at my place better. No offense.”

  “None taken. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” he said in a way that made me think it really wasn’t. “I have to get up early anyway.”

  It was a sore spot all the way around. Even though Justin would never admit it, I knew he resented Jackson again, and probably wondered if I was even making him up.

  I followed my boyfriend to the kitchen where he paused at the back door that led to the veranda. “Next time, my place,” he said, gently lifting my chin up with the tip of his finger so he could kiss me again. Then he left. And my heart sunk into my gut.

  These ghosts were ruining my love life.

  Plus, I didn’t really want to hang out at Justin’s apartment all the time. That place gave me the creeps, and this was from a woman who lived in a haunted house. His apartment complex sat right at the edge of the Dead Forest, a wildlife preserve that spanned a whole side of Landover County, reaching for miles, like a divider that kept us apart from the rest of civilization. Every place in Landover had its myths. You couldn’t live here and not know about them. But the Dead Forest had the creepiest one. People who went into the Dead Forest didn’t come out, hence the name. And it was this fact that made the myth so creepy. Nobody knew why people didn’t return because nobody returned.

  Logically, I knew it was just a rumor. And, I’d never actually heard of anyone going into the forest. But when you live in a town where rumors seem to be proving themselves true right and left, you don’t test things. You don’t decide to be that person who goes in.

  So now, because my jerk of an ex-husband was ruining my love life, my only choices were be the pervy ghost’s sex show or hang out by death’s forest.

  Of course Jackson appeared as soon as the door closed. “I thought he’d never leave,” he said.

  “He shouldn’t have to. He’s my boyfriend.”

  “Just until someone better wins you back.” He winked.

  “So your plan is to annoy your way back into my heart?”

  “Worked the first time.”

  I grabbed one of the dishes drying along the side of the sink and somehow resisted the urge to chuck it out the window. I needed privacy around here. I needed to be free from this house agreement and these ghosts. Clutching the dish so hard I almost broke it with my bare hands, I gently placed it into the cabinet where it belonged. One after another. Then, I grabbed Rex’s dog food and plopped it into the microwave. The thermometer to check the food’s temperature was right where it always was. Everything was always right where it should be. Things were too routine. Too strict.

  “No wonder I’m 31 and still dating. Justin’s not going to stick around if he has to put up with weird house rules and ex-husband ghosts.”

  “Now, Carly. If a boy really likes you for you,” Jackson began. “He won’t care.”

  “Oh shut up,” I replied as the microwave beeped. I whistled for Rex then checked another box off the house agreement checklist I kept on the fridge. “I’m going to burn the sage again, a whole truckload this time.”

  As the familiar sound of dog claws along the hardwood sounded, I felt another presence, and I remembered we had a guest. I felt guilty for yelling at my ex in front of her. But then, it wasn’t the first time my ex-husband and I had done that. In fact arguing in front of company and almost demanding they take sides was pretty much our MO back in the day.

  “I’m sorry to intrude,” the timid voice said, making me instantly feel sorry for her.

  “Allow me to introduce our guest,” Jackson said. A woman appeared with dark bobbed hair, full eyebrows, and a cute button nose. She was dressed in a sleek navy blue skirt and a polkadot sleeveless shirt. She was absolutely stunning.

  “Carly, this is Gloria Elenore Thomas, our newest client,” he said.

  The girl smiled softly at me, hands behind her back as she nervously hover-rocked back and forth. She couldn’t have been older than 18, max.

  I searched my brain for something appropriate to say. “Sorry about your accident,” I managed. “I mean, if it was an accident.”

  She nodded. “It wasn’t.”

  “Let’s go into the dining room and you can tell me everything you remember.”

  I knew it wasn’t going to matter much, as far as the story’s accuracy went. Ghosts didn’t always remember things correctly after they died. It was only when we joined forces during a channeling that we relived the memory, exactly as it happened at the time it happened, second by second.

  I pulled open the top drawer of the credenza in the back of the dining room, grabbed my notebook and pencil, then sat down.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” she said.

  “Gloria wasn’t a regular on Landover Lake,” Jackson said. “She’s from California.”

  “Los Angeles,” she chimed in, looking up at the ceiling like she was trying to remember. “We always rented a house on the lake, every summer since I was six, for two weeks with my aunt’s family. My mother and my aunt grew up in Wisconsin, so even though we all lived in California, we always went to the lake to vacation.” She sat on the chair next to me, such a small spirit, one I suspected was pretty easily taken advantage of in her day.

  She continued. “I looked forward to it every year, eating fresh-picked corn while we caught fireflies and fished. I have to say, we were much more successful at catching fireflies than fish.”

  I nodded along, not much to take notes on yet. “So, the night you passed away. You were renting on the lake? What happened?”

  “My cousin Nettie is what happened. Annette, but everyone called her Nettie. We’d both just graduated. Most years we kept to ourselves, just our families on the lake. But that year, Ne
ttie got it in her head she wanted a boyfriend. A summer fling, she’d said. And the boys on the lake were so cute I found myself wanting that too. The boys only liked Nettie, of course. She’d just dyed her hair, like Marilyn Monroe’s.”

  I wrote Nettie’s name into my notebook along with a short description.

  Gloria squinted her eyes up. “Honestly, I don’t remember too much from the night itself. We went to the sock hop at the dance hall. Nettie found a boy and ditched me like always. I’d just turned 18 and this was my first country club dance. But I didn’t really know anyone, so I was happy when the party broke up early. I wanted to go home.”

  “So the party ended early, huh?” I asked, scribbling as I talked. “Why?”

  She looked at the ceiling. “Somebody spiked the punch and some kids were getting out of control, I think. I don’t really remember. Nettie wasn’t ready to go home, though. I do remember that. She convinced me to sneak on a boat with her. Man, it was the largest, most luxurious boat I’d ever been on, with a downstairs and everything. We thought the people on the boat would be cranked to have us along for their after-party. But I only remember their faces when they found us. They went ape, and not in a good way. I woke up in the water with Nettie.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t fall overboard?”

  “Oh no. I don’t remember how we got in the water, but it wasn’t a fall. And when we were there, treading water, another boat showed up and yelled to us over a megaphone or something. I tried to wave my arms to get their attention, but when I looked up, the boat was coming right for us…”

  I wrote as fast as I could at this point. These girls hadn’t been partiers who met with an unfortunate accident. Something else had gone on entirely, and I was going to figure it out.

  “So, will you help me?” she asked. Her voice seemed weaker now, her body almost completely transparent.

  “Absolutely,” I said. “Tomorrow morning, I’m going to find out everything I can about this so-called accident. We’ll start gathering evidence, schedule a channeling of that night as soon as you’re up for it. And if there’s anyone left from that boat still alive today, they’re going to wish they were dead. Mark my words.”