Dead Man Talking: A Cozy Paranormal Mystery (The Happily Everlasting Series Book 1)

by Jana DeLeon

  She dug the key out of her backpack, unlocked the door, and hurried inside as a huge gust of wind forced a sheet of rain under the awning. She had to shove the door a bit to get it shut with the wind working against her, but finally she got it locked and reached for the light switch. She flipped it on but nothing happened.

  Great.

  She pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and turned on the flashlight to guide her through the living room and into the kitchen. She flipped the light switch in the kitchen but still nothing happened. The power must be out because of the storm. She’d forgotten that part about the lighthouse. Even a gentle spring rain tended to kick the power off.

  Her stomach had been rumbling for the past hour, the package of peanuts she’d eaten on the plane worn off long ago. She’d intended to find something to eat when she got to her aunt’s house, but now the thought of poking around for food and eating in the dark just made her feel even more exhausted. Even the hot shower she’d been looking forward to seemed like a whole bunch of effort.

  Using her phone, she made her way up the first section of the winding staircase to the second floor. There was a small landing with two doors, then the stairs continued up to her aunt’s room on the third level of the lighthouse. Because the lighthouse began to narrow as it rose, nothing was constructed beyond the third level. After that, the stairs continued up to the top of the lighthouse tower where the light used to guide ships safely back to port.

  The door to the left led into what was charitably considered a bunk room. When her aunt purchased the lighthouse, it had contained two sets of bunk beds built into the walls on each side. It had the appearance and claustrophobic feeling of being in a submarine. Her aunt had torn out the beds and turned the small room into a decent-sized closet. The door on the right led to the room her aunt had dubbed Zoe’s room. The sleigh bed was still on the front wall, offering a full view of the picture window across from it. Lightning flashed across the sky, illuminating the small space, and in that moment of brightness, Zoe could tell that nothing had been changed. The room was exactly as it was six years ago when she’d left for California.

  It was both comforting and sad. Comforting that her aunt had kept the room here just for her and sad that she hadn’t bothered to change it for her own use. She tossed her backpack onto the bench at the end of the bed and pulled off her shoes and jeans. When this crisis was over, things were going to change. From now on, Zoe was going to make the time to visit at least once a year, even if she used precious vacation time to do it. Jobs would come and go, but she only had one Aunt Sapphire and she wasn’t going to be around forever. This fall was a stark reminder of that fact.

  She pulled back the covers and climbed into the bed, propping herself up a bit with the pillows so that she could watch the storm. The thunder boomed so loud that it shook the walls, and the lightning flashed so brilliantly across the sky that it was momentarily blinding. Finally, the lightning stopped and all that remained was the downpour. She felt her eyes grow heavy and before she knew it, she was nodding off to the rhythmic sounds of the pouring rain.

  The slumped position she’d fallen asleep in resulted in her head lolling to one side. Finally, her neck had enough of it and awakened her. She checked her watch, surprised that she’d been asleep in that position for a solid three hours. Lightning once again flashed in the distance, and the steady rain sounded against the window. She threw the covers back and headed for the bathroom, groaning when she flipped the light switch and got no response. The power was still out.

  Her phone was back on the nightstand in her room, but the toilet was in between the shower and the vanity. Surely she could find it. She reached her hands out in front of her and finally connected with the toilet tank and the edge of the toilet lid, which was already up. She turned around and prepared to sit but as she lowered herself, the cold plastic she’d expected her exposed tush to connect with was furry and warm, and more importantly, angry.

  She bolted upright as the cat yowled, hissed, and raked a claw across her bare bottom. She could hear its claws on the floor as it scrambled out of the room. What the hell? Sapphire told her the cats always hid during a storm. Sitting on the edge of an open toilet wasn’t the kind of hiding Zoe thought a cat would opt for.

  Her butt smarting from the scratches, she half limped, half shuffled back into the bedroom to get her phone. No way was she attempting that again without light. Given the intensity of the stinging, she might be sleeping on her side the rest of the night.

  She sighed. It wasn’t the least bit surprising that her return home had already become a huge pain in the rear.

  Chapter Two

  Zoe awakened the next morning to a glare of sun in her eyes. She groaned and pulled a pillow over her head. How could she have forgotten that the bedroom window faced east, looking out over the ocean? Maybe because her studio in LA faced west and she usually slept with a gel mask.

  She tried to force her mind back to rest, but it was no use. God’s spotlight, as her aunt called the sun, had brought her out of her slumber and there was no returning. She threw the covers back and rolled out of bed, then padded into the tiny bathroom. She flipped the wall switch and was happy when the overhead light popped on. Because of the remote location and frequent outages, Sapphire had installed a generator, but Zoe hadn’t fired it up in years and was happy she wasn’t going to have to depend on fuzzy recall to get it running.

  While she was giving silent thanks for the restored power, she looked around the remodeled bathroom. Even in the dark, it had felt different the night before, but the tiny glimpses she’d gotten with lightning flashes hadn’t revealed much. And after the whole butt-scratching-cat affair, she hadn’t felt like retrieving her phone for a closer look. Now she blinked and looked around.

  Sapphire hadn’t been lying when she said she was bringing the house up to date. The bathroom was only large enough to contain sink, toilet, and shower, but the old lopsided, cheap wood cabinet had been replaced with a gleaming white porcelain pedestal sink. The floor was rid of the hideous yellow vinyl that had resided there since the dawn of time and was now covered in white marble tile with a turquoise vein running through it. The plastic shower stall was long gone, and the same tile on the floor made up the sides and bottom of the new shower with a glass door. The walls were painted light turquoise to match the vein in the marble. The entire effect made the room feel larger and relaxing at the same time.

  As she splashed her face with cold water, she mulled over the generator situation, finally deciding it would probably be a good idea to figure it out in case another storm rolled through tonight. Not that Zoe minded sitting in the dark. She’d never had fanciful ideas about monsters under the bed or in the closet, but she knew Sapphire usually kept a well-stocked freezer, and too much downtime could spoil the goodies she had stored. And she definitely wasn’t looking for a repeat performance with that cat.

  As she stepped out of the bathroom, she saw something move in the hallway. Aside from her bathroom stalker, Zoe hadn’t seen or heard the cats during the night and assumed they were hiding from the storm. But with the sun shining bright, they’d probably crept out from under furniture and were going about their regular cat business. She moved into the hall to see which of Sapphire’s four-legged roomies was on the move and sucked in a breath.

  It wasn’t a cat. It was a man.

  An old man with silver hair, wearing a white dress shirt, navy suit coat, and baby-blue-and-red plaid boxers. And he was going down the stairs.

  She hurried back into the bedroom, shut the door, and locked it.

  Think.

  She pulled out her cell phone and started to dial 911. Then she stopped. Certainly the man couldn’t be the contractor her aunt had mentioned, but what if he was one of Sapphire’s friends? What if her aunt had asked him to stop by and check on things? Zoe had told the admitting nurse that she’d get there as soon as possible, but no one was expecting her last night. Sapphire might have made arrangem
ents for the cats once she woke up.

  Granted, the man had been wearing a suit coat and boxers, but that only gave more merit to the theory that he was a friend of Sapphire’s. If he were there to rob the place, surely he would have put on pants. Men walking around in a suit on top and boxers on bottom would attract attention, even in Everlasting.

  Sapphire didn’t have any weapons that Zoe was aware of, unless you counted kitchen knives, and in order to get to those she’d have to go right past the man on the stairs. Zoe had Mace in her suitcase, but it was still in the car. She scanned the room, looking for something solid and easy to grip. Surely she could take down one old man if she needed to, right?

  She glanced up at the oars hanging on the wall above the headboard. Sapphire used them for decoration, but Zoe remembered Sapphire telling her that she’d found old kayaks in the storage shed when she moved in. The kayaks couldn’t be saved, but Sapphire had kept the oars to hang inside. They were solid wood.

  Before she could change her mind, she lifted one of the oars from the hooks holding it in place and eased the bedroom door open. There was no sign of the man on the stairs, so Zoe slipped outside the room and began to creep down the stairs, hesitating every time a step creaked. When she got to the bottom, she paused and heard movement coming from the other side of the wall in the kitchen. She lifted the oar up like a bat, clenching it with both hands, and readied herself to spring around the corner and into the kitchen.

  One. Two. Three.

  Heart pounding, she whirled around the wall, eyes darting across the room, looking for the old man. But the male specimen standing in the middle of the kitchen and looking at her with a somewhat amused expression, wasn’t even remotely similar to the man she’d seen on the stairs.

  Dane Stanton had always been a prime example of how rugged men should look. Unfortunately, in the time Zoe had been gone, that hadn’t changed. He was every bit as gorgeous and sexy now as the day he’d dumped her.

  Zoe lowered the oar and glared at him. “What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?”

  He gave her that grin that had always been impossible to resist. “Good to see you too. To answer your question, it’s not your kitchen, and I’m here working.”

  He waved a hand around and Zoe realized that the room was in the midst of a remodel and he was holding a piece of tile. The walls had been painted, and beautiful seafoam-green cabinets with glass fronts had been installed, but the countertop, backsplash, and flooring were currently missing. As were appliances. It was a good thing she opted to skip that meal last night. She’d have been highly disappointed if she’d had the energy and desire to whip something up and had gotten a good look at the kitchen the night before.

  “You’re doing the remodel?” she asked.

  “You sound surprised. If you remember correctly, I was always good with my hands.”

  A flush crept up her neck and she tried to will it back down before it hit her face, but it was no use. Her cheeks grew warm and his grin got bigger.

  “I thought you were running one of the fishing boats for your dad,” she said.

  “I did for a bit, but I’ve always known it wasn’t for me. Willie Cramer was getting up there in age and needed some help with his contracting business, so I thought I’d give it a try. Five years later, Willie retired and I took over.”

  “That’s great. I mean, that you found something you really enjoy. Most people don’t.”

  “You did.”

  She nodded but looked off at the cabinets behind him, unable to meet his gaze. Her choice of career hadn’t been the wedge that had divided them, but her desired location for doing the job had been. Zoe had attended college with one thing in mind—to get out of Everlasting and have the kind of life she saw others living on television. The pull of the big city was too much for her to ignore. Fancy restaurants, designer boutiques, concerts, museums, art galleries, and so many people to choose friends from that it would be impossible to get stuck listening to a bore.

  Everlasting was exactly the opposite. The same few eating places that had been there for fifty years, with menus just as old. The same people doing the same things they’d done every day and teaching their kids to do those things as well. It was like the entire place was on some big loop, repeating itself with every generation. And that wasn’t even taking into account the odd things the good citizens of Everlasting believed as the gospel. Things most people thought about only when reading fictional stories about witches and ghosts.

  “So how is LA?” he asked.

  “Good. Busy. I’ve been working a lot of hours, trying to position myself for that big promotion that’s opening up soon.”

  “Prime-time weather girl?”

  It was so much more than the way he made it sound, which was almost immature and dismissive, but she knew better than to argue with him over it. They’d had this same argument so many times before and it always ended the same way. He didn’t understand why being on television in Maine and talking about how the weather would affect fishing today couldn’t be enough for her, and she didn’t understand why he knew there was a huge, awesome world beyond the city limits, but had no desire to explore it.

  She nodded, hoping that was the end of it, then moved to change the subject. “Did you do the remodel on the bathroom in my room?”

  “I’ve done all the remodeling in the lighthouse. I hire a couple helpers when I’m working on a strict deadline, and I sub out anything but basic plumbing and electrical, but when the homeowner isn’t in any hurry, I prefer to do the work myself. It’s satisfying to see your artistic vision slowly turn into the thing you’d only previously imagined.”

  She blinked. Of all the things she’d expected from Dane Stanton, becoming a contractor wasn’t one of them. Considering himself an artist was even higher on the list. Not that she disagreed with him. People who could look at anything tired and old and envision something modern and beautiful were definitely artists. It’s just that in all the years she’d known Dane, basically her entire life, she’d never heard him express an interest in anything that way.

  “Well, it’s beautiful,” she said. “The white and turquoise is serene and perfect for such a small space. I’m surprised Sapphire didn’t redo the bedroom as well.”

  “I think she wanted you to pick things out. She held up on the work in the bathroom until it sprung a leak.”

  “Oh.” Instantly, Zoe felt guilty. “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing the rest of the work you’ve done here.”

  He blinked, clearly surprised, but she could tell the compliment pleased him. “You didn’t see it last night?”

  “It was really late by the time I got here, and the power was out.”

  “I should have figured. Doesn’t take much to shut it down, and that storm was a good one. Did you go by the hospital before you came here?”

  His question held a tiny bit of reproach and Zoe instantly resented it. It was one thing for her to come down on herself for not visiting often enough—or at all, as the case may be—but it was entirely another thing for someone else to insinuate she wasn’t living up to her responsibilities.

  “I went straight from the airport to the hospital,” she said. He could hardly find fault with that.

  “How was she?”

  “Awake, but weak. She fell asleep again quite quickly, but she sounded normal.”

  “Did she remember what happened?”

  Zoe frowned. “No. I was going to ask you about that. You’re the one who found her?”

  He nodded. “I came in around seven. It was a little earlier than my usual time, but Sapphire gets up before sunrise so she never cared if I went at it sooner than planned. I walked through the kitchen, assessing the placement of the new light fixtures that I needed to order, and almost tripped over her.”

  “Where was she exactly?”

  He pointed to the stairs. “Right at the bottom. Sorta laid out across the floor from the last step.”

  She looked down at the floor, as
if expecting answers to materialize. “Here?”

  He stared at her for a moment and smiled. “Going to play detective? I remember when you went through your Nancy Drew phase.”

  “I’m not channeling Nancy Drew or any other PI. I’m just trying to figure out what happened. What Sapphire said doesn’t make sense.”

  “In what way?”

  “She doesn’t remember coming downstairs, and she was still wearing her nightclothes. Sapphire never leaves her bedroom without putting on her walking clothes. Not even the time that frayed cord on her blow-dryer caught the bathroom on fire. So unless you’re going to tell me that Sapphire’s personality or mental faculties have been drastically altered since I’ve been gone, I have to wonder what would have made her come downstairs without taking the time to change.”

  Dane frowned. “Sapphire is having a bit of stiffness in her lower back and knees. Probably arthritis, but her mind is as sharp as it’s always been.”

  “Well, that stairwell winds around with landings on all three floors. She hardly slipped at the top and fell all the way into the kitchen. She came down those stairs for some reason, and I’d like to know what it was.”

  He turned his hands up. “I can’t imagine what. If there was a noise, it would likely be one of the cats. They’ve been poking around at my construction stuff since day one. The door was locked when I came in, but I still called the police right after I called the paramedics. Just in case.”

  “They didn’t find anything?”

  “No forced entry. All doors and windows locked.” He cocked his head to one side. “Is that why you jumped into the kitchen, ready to bash me with an oar?”

  Suddenly Zoe remembered the man. “I thought I saw something moving on the stairs,” she said, unwilling to describe exactly what she’d seen. Maybe it was fatigue or acute hunger making her see things.

  “Probably one of the cats.”

  She nodded, not wanting to delve deeper into the discussion. “Sapphire said that I shouldn’t let Cornelius’s chatter bother me. Is he new? Or is she trying something besides cats?”