by Terri Reid
Bradley paused, the second bite of muffin halfway to his mouth, and looked down at his waistline. “I work out,” he said defensively.
“Besides,” Rosie added, defending him. “It’s very normal for men to gain weight while their wives are pregnant.”
Bradley put the muffin back on his plate. “I’m not gaining weight,” he said. “Am I?”
“No, of course not,” Rosie said, patting his arm. “You look just fine.”
“Fer a middle-aged man,” Stanley added.
Bradley pushed back his chair, stood up, gave Rosie a hug and nodded to Stanley. “I’d better be getting in to the office,” he said. “If you need me to get anything for the shower or do anything, don’t hesitate to ask.”
“Thank you, Bradley,” she replied. “But between Margaret and Kate, I think we have it all covered.”
“Excellent,” he replied. “Thanks again. She is going to be so surprised.”
He left the house and walked over to the cruiser, but before getting in, he stared at his reflection in the mirror. Am I getting a little thick around the middle? he asked himself as he turned first one way and then the other.
Stanley chuckled loudly from behind the curtain on the front window as he watched Bradley.
“Stanley, that was mean,” Rosie said, holding back her own chuckle. “You know as well as I do that Bradley hasn’t put on an ounce of weight since he’s been married.”
“A man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do to protect his wife’s blueberry muffins,” Stanley replied. “‘Sides, a little work out in the gym will help him release some of that anxiety that’s eating him.”
“He only has anxiety because you keep teasing him,” she replied.
“Toughen the boy up,” Stanley said with a grin. “Good for him.”
Shaking her head, Rosie walked back into the kitchen. “You know, Stanley,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. And I think that perhaps we ought to start eating better. You know, more salads and fruit. Fewer baked goods.”
“What?” Stanley asked, dropping the curtain and hurrying back to the kitchen. “What are you talking about woman?”
She turned from the sink and grinned at him. “Gotcha!”
“You nearly scared the life out of me,” he said with a smile, walking across the room and enfolding her in his arms. “I sure didn’t marry you because you were a good cook, but I ain’t complaining about it.”
She laid her head on his shoulder. “Oh, Stanley,” she said. “I’m the luckiest woman in the world.”
He smiled down at her. “Well, that makes perfect sense,” he said softly. “Seeing as I’m the luckiest man.”
“Well, luckiest man,” she said, stepping back. “How are we going to get Mary to her own baby shower without letting her know anything is wrong?”
“You just leave that to me,” he said.
“You’ve got a plan?” she asked hopefully.
“Well, no,” he admitted with a wink. “But don’t you worry; I got a whole week to figure this out.”
Chapter Three
Clarissa hurried down the bus aisle and slipped into the seat next to her best friend, Maggie Brennan. She sat quietly until everyone else at their bus stop had taken their seats and the bus driver had closed the door and started moving down the street. Then she turned to her friend and quietly whispered, “I need you to help me with a surprise.”
Maggie smiled and nodded. “I love surprises,” she said. “What kind of surprise?”
“On Halloween we’re having a ghost story telling party,” Clarissa said.
“I know,” Maggie replied, her eyes sparkling with delight. “My family gets to come, too.”
“Oh, cool!” Clarissa replied. “Then you know.”
“Know what?”
“That everyone is supposed to tell a ghost story,” Clarissa said.
Maggie shook her head. “No,” she said, her eyes widening in interest. “I didn’t know that at all.”
Clarissa nodded eagerly. “Yes. Everyone is supposed to tell one,” she explained.
“Do they have to be spooky?”
Shrugging, Clarissa thought about the question for a moment. “I don’t know. But I don’t think so. Not all of Mary’s stories are spooky ones.”
“Whew,” Maggie said, leaning back in the seat. “That’s a relief. I have lots of ghost stories, but none of them are spooky.”
“But that’s the thing,” Clarissa said.
“What?” Maggie asked.
“You have lots of ghost stories. Mary has lots of ghost stories, and even my dad has ghost stories,” she explained. “But I don’t have any ghost stories. At all.”
“Oh,” Maggie replied. “And you want to have one, right?”
Clarissa nodded again. “Right,” she said. “I need a ghost story.”
“Okay,” Maggie said with a smile. “I’ll tell you one of my stories, and then you can pretend that it’s yours.”
Shaking her head, Clarissa faced her friend. “No, that won’t work,” she explained. “It has to be my story, or it won’t be as good.”
“But you can’t see ghosts,” Maggie reasoned.
“Remember when you taught me how to jump double-dutch?” Clarissa asked.
Maggie nodded.
“Well, you taught me how to do that,” Clarissa reasoned. “So, you can teach me how to see ghosts.”
Maggie thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think it’s that easy.”
“Well, double-dutch wasn’t easy at all, and you still taught me.”
“But I don’t know how I learned,” Maggie said. “I just did it one day.”
Clarissa folded her arms over her chest and sat back in her seat, thinking about what Maggie had just said. The bus rumbled farther down the route and pulled to the side of the road to pick up another group of children. Waiting until the bus was moving again, Clarissa turned back to Maggie. “Well, maybe if you could try to remember what happened the first time you saw a ghost,” she said slowly, thinking it through as she voiced it, “maybe you could tell me, and then I could do it.”
“I was pretty little,” Maggie said, her nose wrinkled in concern. “I don’t know if I can remember all the way back then.”
“Please?” Clarissa implored.
“Okay,” Maggie said, biting her lower lip in concentration. “The one thing I remember is that I first started seeing ghosts when I looked sideways.”
“You looked sideways?” Clarissa asked. “What does that mean?”
Sitting back her in her seat, Maggie kept her face frozen forward while she moved her eyes to look at Clarissa sitting beside her. “Like this,” she said.
“What?” Clarissa asked.
Maggie huffed with frustration. “Look at my eyes,” she said, keeping her face forward.
Clarissa leaned forward and looked at Maggie’s face. “Oh, only your eyes are looking sideways,” she said. “I get it.”
Maggie blinked and then turned her head. “Yeah, I remember that I saw more ghosts when I looked sideways at them,” she said. “And sometimes they would disappear when I turned and looked at them.”
“Were they shy?”
Maggie shrugged. “Maybe,” she said. “But that’s all I remember.”
Clarissa sat back in her seat facing forward and slid her eyes to the side. “I don’t see anything,” she whispered to Maggie.
“That’s ‘cause there aren’t any ghosts on the bus,” Maggie said. “It only works when there are actually ghosts around you.”
“Oh, yeah,” Clarissa giggled. “I forgot.”
Chapter Four
Mary shivered in her chair and glanced up to see if her office door was open. She was surprised to see a middle-aged man sheepishly walk from the door towards her desk.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered nervously. “I’m probably in the wrong place.”
Mary smiled up at him and slowly rose from her chair, pushing against the armrests to leverage her
decidedly pregnant body into a standing position.
“You’re pregnant,” he blurted out.
Her smile widened. “Yes, I know,” she said with gentle humor.
Shaking his head nervously, he exhaled softly. “Of course you know,” he said with chagrin. “I’m such an idiot. I really should be leaving.”
“Wait,” she exclaimed, holding out her hand as she slowly walked across the room. “Don’t make me waste all of that effort.”
His eyes widened in horror, and then he saw the smile on her face and relaxed. “Sorry,” he said again with a sheepish smile. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”
Biting back a chuckle, Mary leaned back against her desk. “Like what?” she asked.
He looked around her office. “You know, been to a psychic or anything like that.”
“Well, I hate to disappoint you,” she replied. “But you still haven’t been to a psychic. I’m a private investigator.”
“But I thought…” he stammered. “I came here…”
He looked around helplessly.
“I can see and communicate with ghosts,” she said. “But I don’t look into the future or read palms or find missing items. I just have the ability to communicate with some dead people.”
“How? How can you do that?” he asked.
“Well, it all happened the night that I died,” she replied.
He stared at her, his jaw dropping, and stepped backwards to the door. “You think you’re dead?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I got better,” she said, trying to keep a straight face. She looked at the fear in his eyes and took pity on him. It really wasn’t his fault that he was slightly awkward. “I died on the operating table and had an out-of-body experience. I even went towards the light.” She paused for a moment and met his eyes. “I was given a choice. I could continue on or go back and live. I could be with my family. I could live my life. But things would be different for me.”
She folded her arms loosely over her belly and sighed. “So, I came back,” she said. “And found, to my great surprise, that now I could see and communicate with ghosts who were stuck here, on this side of the light, because they needed someone alive to help them move on.”
His face lost the look of fear and he stepped toward her. “So, you’re for real?”
She shrugged and nodded. “Pretty much,” she said. “I’m in the profession of helping people move on, and sometimes that means I’m solving crimes. But sometimes it means I just have to do research. Pretty average private investigative work.”
He studied her for a moment. “How much do you charge?” he asked.
“Well, when you have ghosts for clients, you really can’t expect to make too much money,” she replied. “Generally, I end up working for free. But the disability income from the Chicago Police Department makes up the difference.”
“You can’t work because you were shot?” he asked.
Mary sighed. This isn’t going to help at all, she thought. “No,” she said honestly. “I can’t work because I see ghosts. That either classifies me for disability because I’m psychologically unstable, or, as my friend and psychiatrist Gracie puts it, I got too much going on to concentrate on my job.”
He actually smiled, and Mary felt herself relax. “You don’t seem crazy,” he ventured.
“Why, thank you,” she replied.
Once again, he flushed with embarrassment and started to step back. “I’m so sorry,” he faltered. “I can’t believe I said that.”
Mary laughed and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “Now tell me why you decided to come here today.”
He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a narrow piece of laminated paper that was folded in fourths. He unfolded the paper and handed it to her. She looked down at a spelling test that was obviously done by a child. Most of the words had been spelled incorrectly, and there was a bright red ‘F” at the top of the page with red writing that was nearly faded. Mary squinted at the words, trying to read them.
He gently took the paper back from her. “I’ll read it to you. You have the ability to do much better than this. I believe in you. You should believe in yourself,” he said, and then he looked up and met her eyes. “My name is Andrew Tyler, and I need you to help me find who murdered my fourth grade teacher.”
Chapter Five
Mary picked up her bottle of water, took a sip and then sat down in her chair on the other side of the desk from Andrew. She picked up a yellow note pad and pen. “Okay, why don’t you give me the details, and I’ll see if this is a case I can help you with,” she said.
He nodded. “Okay,” he replied. “Her name was Miss Banks, Kristen Banks, and she was a fourth grade teacher at Centennial Grammar School in Polo in the mid-seventies. It was a couple weeks before Spring Break, and she was engaged to a soldier who was serving in Vietnam.”
He paused and took a deep breath.
“She must have been working late, after school,” he said, nervously brushing his hair off his forehead. “The janitor found her in the morning. They said she’d tripped down the stairs and struck her head on the rail. They said it was an accident, a horrible accident.”
Mary looked up from her notes. “But you don’t think it was an accident?” she asked.
Shaking his head, he nervously tapped his fingers together. After a moment, he took a deep breath and leaned closer to the desk. “I saw her,” he said, lowering his voice. “After she was dead. I saw her.”
Mary leaned back in her chair. “What did you see?”
Shrugging, trying to remain casual although Mary could see the emotion he was trying to contain, he continued, “They kept us in the same classroom but brought in a substitute to teach us for the rest of the year. Often, I’d glance up, and I’d see her, for just a moment, standing next to her desk. And the look on her face…”
He stopped and took a deep breath. “She looked so sad,” he said. “So incredibly sad. She would look out at all of us and slowly shake her head. Then she would look directly at me, and she would say something. But I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t understand it.”
Clasping his hands together tightly, he stared down at them intently. Finally, he looked back up, his eyes glistening with unshed tears. “They told me that the last thing she did before she died was grade my spelling test,” he said, his voice thick with emotion. “The last thing she did was take the time to write me a note that she believed in me and that I needed to believe in myself. That note changed my life.”
“Perhaps she was sad because she couldn’t be with you and the rest of the students,” Mary suggested. “Perhaps it was her regret that she couldn’t continue making a difference.”
“No,” he said decisively, shaking his head. “No, it just doesn’t make sense. She was really athletic. She would dash up and down those stairs a couple of times a day. And now, as an adult, as I review the accident and the momentum it would have taken for her to not only fall but also crack her skull on the railings, I believe she was pushed.”
“Didn’t the police look into it?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, they just decided it was an accident,” he said. “I’ve always thought it was more than an accident, so much so that I bought the old school when it was put up for sale.”
“You bought it?” she asked incredulously.
“Yeah, they were going to tear it down,” he said. “And I knew that any evidence would be gone when the school was gone, so I bought it. But, the city still wants to condemn it. They’ve only given me a couple of months.”
Mary put down the pad and the pencil. “Okay, this is really impressive, and you’ve done a great deal for your former teacher,” she said. “But I don’t know if walking through an empty school building is going to produce anything.”
“It’s not empty,” he replied.
“What?” she asked.
“When the new school was built about twenty years ago, they didn’t want a
ny of the old furnishings. They wanted everything to be new, so I added a contingency to the purchase that I got to keep all of the furnishings,” he said, “desks, tables, chairs and even some of the older library books. Anything they didn’t use in the new school, I bought.”
“Have you been back to your old classroom?” she asked.
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I’ve been doing a little investigating on my own.”
Mary studied him for a long moment. “This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “She changed my life. I owe her so much. I feel like I can’t rest until I find out, once and for all, if her death was just an accident or if she was murdered.”
“Well, I guess we should take a look,” she said.
His face broke into a wide smile. “Thank you,” he said, standing up and leaning over the desk to shake her hand. “Thank you so much.”
Mary shook her head. “I haven’t done anything yet,” she said.
“That’s okay,” he replied. “I know you will. I believe in you.”
Chapter Six
“There are ghosts in the library?” Clarissa whispered, following Maggie into the children’s section of the library, in the far southeast corner.
“Shhhhh,” Maggie said, looking over her shoulder to make sure her mother wasn’t close by. Kate Brennan, Maggie’s mother, had picked the girls up after school and brought them to the library. “I told my mom that we had to come here to work on our special Halloween school project. She doesn’t know we’re also looking for ghosts.”
“But ghosts are here, right?” Clarissa insisted.
“Sometimes,” Maggie said. “Ghosts like to hang around old stuff, like old books, so sometimes they’re here.”
“Okay, I’m going to start looking for them, too,” Clarissa said, moving her eyes to one side as she walked alongside the book stacks.
“Just be careful,” Maggie cautioned.