The Ghosts of Mystic Springs

by Mona Marple

  “You must be able to breathe now?” Sage asks, and if I had the energy I’d be tempted to see if the living can hurt spirits, since I now know it works the other way around. My sister. Adorable in a completely infuriating way.

  I take a final shaky breath and then attempt to climb to my feet, but I feel a twinge in the back of my leg and collapse back down to the ground. They can come to me.

  And they do.

  Sheriff Morton leads Nettie as gently as he can, while continuing to restrain her, and my sister and Patton bring up the rear.

  “You think she’s being set up?” Sheriff Morton asks, looking at me from above his spectacles, which have dropped down his nose as he looks down at me.

  I nod. “It’s the murder weapon, isn’t it?”

  Sheriff Morton glances at Nettie, then back to me. “This is police business now…”

  “Oh, please. I know what’s happening. You’ve found the murder weapon in her garbage. I realised after I fetched you – there’s no way the murderer would stand on her lawn gazing at the murder weapon before dumping it in her own bin.”

  “But that’s what happened.”

  “Yes, everything except she isn’t the murderer. I think the real killer planted it, probably somewhere obvious, for her to find, which she had just done when Sage and I walked past. She panicked and hid it in the closest place she could.”

  “It was in the flower bed.” Nettie says, nodding her pretty little head.

  “You’d been hiding the weapon in the flower bed?” Sheriff Morton asks.

  “Geeze, he’s even slower than I remember him being.” Patton murmurs. Sage gushes at his side.

  “No.” Nettie says. “I found it in my flower bed today. It wasn’t even hidden. And it definitely wasn’t there yesterday.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “I’m out here every day. Gardening is what I do. It helps me relax.” Nettie explains. “If this knife had been in my garden, I’d have seen it right away. Whoever put it there, they did it today. And if I hadn’t come out here quickly and seen it, someone else would have.”

  “So, you find a knife in your lawn. Did you realise it was the murder weapon?”

  “I thought that was a sensible conclusion to draw.” Nettie says.

  “You called the police, I’m guessing? Over in Rydell or Jefferson?”

  Nettie shakes her head. “I hid it and then went for a drive. I needed to think. I didn’t know what to do.”

  “And then you came home.”

  “And saw Connie.” Nettie continues. She looks at me and I wish I could scoop her up in a hug. Who could want to inflict more pain on this woman who’s already suffered so much pain and humiliation? “I knew she’d found it, I’m not stupid. I just wasn’t ready to deal with it. I know I should have called the police, I do know that. And I would have. I was just nervous.”

  “I’ll still need to take you into the station for questioning, you know that right?” Sheriff Morton says, but he releases her from his grip. Nettie nods her head then stretches her arms out behind her back.

  “Do you know who might want to frame you?” I ask her.

  “Well, the killer, I guess.” Nettie says with a shrug. “But I don’t know who that could be. From what I can gather, Lola didn’t have any friends around here.”

  “Erm, Connie.” Sage says, her gaze focused on the house. “You might want to tell Nettie that there’s smoke coming from her house.”

  Sure enough, a plume of thick smoke appears from the open front door.

  “Nettie…” I begin, and she sees the alarm on my face and turns to look at the destruction being caused.

  She lets out a groan and drops to her knees on the lawn. “Damn it.”

  Sheriff Morton dives across the lawn, onto the veranda and then pushes the door open. “It’s okay, it’s just a waste paper basket that’s caught fire. Right by the door, it looks worse than it is. Were you trying to burn things, Mrs Frasier?”

  Nettie lets out a bitter laugh. “Yes, I was. My marriage papers. Not worth the paper they’re printed on.”

  “Some people might say it’s suspicious having a fire right around the time you find evidence to implicate you in a murder.”

  “Why, Sheriff?” Nettie asks, and even as she addresses the official, her poise is perfect, posture elegant. “Because clearly I’d kept a diary about it all that I realised I needed to burn?”

  Taylor Morton allows a small smile at her retort. “Why now, ma’am?”

  Nettie sighs. “Because I received a letter today. I’ve been receiving them every few days, letters from Lola. Detailing her affair with my husband. Every last detail. I’ve burnt every one when it arrived. After reading them, of course, I’m not smart enough to leave them unread. And today, I decided to burn all of the papers that ever bound me to that man. Wedding photos too. I wanted rid of it all.”

  “Lola Anti had been writing to you?” Sheriff Morton asks, and I see his mind whirring. Sure, I think she is being set up, but to his logical brain, she still has the biggest motive to want Lola dead. And she just made her motive even bigger.

  Nettie swallows and licks her lips. “I didn’t kill her, Sheriff. I have too much to lose.”

  The sheriff raises an eyebrow. “Like what?”

  “All this.” She says, gesturing with her arms around the land her property sits on. “It’s gone in an instant if I take up a life of crime.”

  “I’m pretty sure our administration doesn’t take your property just like that.” Sheriff Morton says with a shake of his head. “Nice story, though. Now, let’s move things along. We need to get going.”

  “I’ll come with you.” I say. “Help restrain the prisoner and all that. I’m guessing you need to walk her back to yours?”

  “Fine.” Taylor says. The three of us begin the walk towards the sheriff’s house, and when he piles Nettie into the back of his regular vehicle and then drives off with her, I turn and walk down his path, and knock on his door.

  “Is everything okay?” Adele asks, harried, as she answers the door. I get the distinct impression she’s been peeking from the lounge window ever since Taylor left her and the babies to come and help me, and I can’t blame her.

  “I need to ask you a question.” I say, seeing myself into the sprawling home. The babies sit in bouncers in front of an enormous television screen that isn’t switched on. Classical music plays on a low volume.

  “They say it’s good for brain development.” Adele explains. “I can’t stand the stuff but I’ve been trying to let them listen for 30 minutes a day. Just so you don’t think I’m a pompous lawyer who listens to classical music. I honestly don’t know my Beethoven from my… well… pick any other classical artist, person, thing!”

  I laugh. Adele is such a welcoming character. I want to spend more time shooting the breeze with her, cuddling her babies over hot or tepid drinks, getting to know how her brain and her heart work. But right now, I just need her brain, and I’m prepared for a long visit. I’ve heard that lawyers never give straight answers, and a straight answer is what I need.

  “Anyway, you need to ask me something? If it’s about a woman’s pelvic floor, yes the rumours are true, it goes to hell.”

  “Erm, it’s not about a pelvic floor actually, whatever that is.” I say. “It’s a legal question. I don’t know what kind of law you did? Do? I hope you can help.”

  “I’ll do my best but my baby brain seriously feels like I’ve forgotten like 98% of everything I know, and I’ve never claimed to know that much to start. I was more of a, know where to find the facts kind of lawyer, not a memorise the facts kind of lawyer, you know?”

  “Uh-huh.” I agree, but I don’t know. My idea of being able to find the facts is typing a question into a search engine and hoping for the best. Surely lawyers can’t follow that system too. Not while charging $500 an hour. Surely?

  “So…?”

  “Right. Yeah. So, this is just between us, if that’s okay? It’s
a little bit personal and I –“

  “I tell Taylor nothing, don’t worry.” Adele says with a wink.

  “OK, thanks, good. So, let’s say I have some money or something to pass on after I die. Could I give it with conditions on it, like they had to do certain things to get it? Or if something happened, they could lose it? Is that even possible?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Adele says, debunking my thoughts about lawyers not giving straight answers. “Totally. See it all the time. People love control.”

  “So, how would it work?”

  “Well, whatever it was would be included in your Will, and your Will would just specify the conditions. It could be, like, won’t inherit until a certain age, that’s the most common one, but it could be anything really.”

  “Could it be that they lose the money if they got in trouble with the law?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Adele says, walking across to the music system and turning the power off. “Sorry, that music is driving me insane. I’ll take crying babies over that. But yeah, totally. You got someone you need to motivate to stay on the straight and narrow, it can be really powerful.”

  “I imagine.” I say. Adele is watching me, waiting for more detail. I silently apologise to Sandy and Coral, Sage’s daughters. “My nieces.”

  “Agh, that’s the worst.” Adele says with a conspiratorial wink.

  21

  Sage

  Rydell Grove is a hippie’s worst nightmare. I avoid the place, although the hot dog vendor on Smith Street has this dimple when he smiles that makes it almost tolerable when I do end up across this way.

  It’s one of those towns that is desperate to be a city, ya know? All high rise developments, people with briefcases who really have nowhere to rush to, and a mayor who is hungry for their little small town news to get some national coverage.

  But tonight, I’m here with Patton Davey, who actually complimented me on my hair when he picked me up. Well, he asked if I’d had it cut. Which I clearly haven’t. But I have curled it and that makes it look shorter, so he was close. I guess the Sheriff pays a little attention to more than just law breakers, huh.

  The police station is empty, lights out, car park deserted. Which proves my point about the place being a small town. I’m pretty sure the cop shops across New York don’t close so everyone can go home for grilled cheese suppers.

  There’s something about seeing a building like this in the dark. Something that’s plain wrong, and unsettling. I move a little closer to Patton, who side-glances at me and narrows his eyes. He’s in work mode now. No more comments about my hair.

  “Stay close.” He commands, as if I was going to do anything but.

  The station is small, I know that from when I ventured out this way for an organic food fayre a few years ago, stalls of expensive cheeses and enormous home grown zucchini all set up in the police station parking lot for some crazy reason. Every time a cop walked through the crowd with a hot dog (from the dimpled vendor) and a takeout coffee, they looked at the ground guiltily before disappearing back into the little station. But in the dark this place is cavernous. The cells, in particular, terrify me. Nobody stays there overnight, in fact I suspect they’re barely used at all, but I have to force myself to look away from them before my imagination runs too wild.

  I had my dabbles with the law when I was younger, experimenting with things I shouldn’t, peer pressure causing me to try things, say things, do things I wouldn’t have considered when with my more sensible sister. But I managed to avoid the police. I never set foot in a police station, never got a warning from a stern officer, and never had to go in a cell. But it was touch and go for a while. My need for an adventure, that longing to live a life bigger than my parents’, it had me confused for a while about what kind of adventures I wanted to end up having.

  “You listening?” Patton grunts.

  I shake the thoughts from my head. “Sorry, I was distracted.”

  “God damn it, Sage.” Patton curses. “I thought you were taking this seriously?”

  “I am.” I protest. “This place spooks me.”

  “We are the spooks, remember?” Patton says, and then he flashes me the most dazzling smile I might ever have seen. Or in the last fifteen years at least.

  I grin. “Sorry, Sheriff, I’m listening. What were you saying?”

  “I’ll find the file and then we can split it, okay? You just need to read through as much as possible.”

  “What are we looking for, exactly?” I ask as we enter a room filled with filing cabinets. My lack of experience hangs heavy on my shoulders, like a winter coat.

  Patton shrugs. “You can never tell. Just consider everything and let me know if anything doesn’t add up.”

  I nod, unconvinced, as he hands me a small brown folder of papers. I set them out on a corner desk piled high with papers, half-full coffee cups and an ashtray full of cold cigarette butts.

  “You get started there, I’m going to look for more.” He commands, and moves away. He must see the panic in my eyes because he moves closer for a moment and reaches out, touches my arm. “I won’t leave you.”

  I nod, one up-down motion, not trusting myself to do anything more. If you’ve heard people talk about chemistry, they were making it up, okay? Because nobody has ever felt the way I did when Sheriff Davey just touched my arm. The electrics in the room flicker, and the lamppost across the street extinguishes itself. That’s when you know there’s chemistry. And by Patton’s swift retreat towards the file cabinets, he felt it too.

  I gulp and force myself to open the brown folder, ignoring the desk clutter as best I can. Whoever calls this their workplace is a pig. It’ll be a man, of course. A man who grew up with a mother fetching and carrying for them and expects life to always offer them the same service. I shake my head and glance at the first sheet of paper.

  “There’s an incident report.” I call out across the room. Patton is scouring every file within the cabinets, file by file, drawer by drawer. “What are you doing?”

  “Things get misfiled.” He says with a shrug. “What does the report say?”

  “Not much.” I say. Most of the boxes on the double-sided sheet of paper are blank, incomplete. There isn’t even a date. “It says it’s a homicide, it’s definitely about Lola, but nothing’s really been filled out. How can that be?”

  “It’s not a Rydell problem.” Patton says, slamming one drawer closed and opening the next. “They’ll be busy on their own cases.”

  “What? Like, littering?” I ask. “Nothing ever happens here.”

  He sighs. “They probably don’t know what to do with a murder, in fairness.”

  “And you do?” I ask, then cover my mouth as I realise how the question sounds. “I mean, have you ever -”

  “No.” He admits. “First murder case. But I want to catch the killer. These guys want to stick the papers in a drawer and forget it.”

  I can’t argue with that.

  Form-filling has never been my idea of a fun way to spend time, but even I can tell that the paperwork in this folder is woefully inadequate. A DUI probably gets more attention than Lola’s murder has, and as insufferable as she was with her natural beauty and her disregard for people’s feelings, she deserves more than that.

  I move on from the incident report. The next few pages are sheets of yellow legal pads, each with a scribbled note on.

  “Well, I think I’ve cracked it.” I say, reading one of the sheets. “John from Thompson Road saw a UFO on the night in question. He didn’t actually see any aliens but he imagines they were here, and they took Lola’s body with them for human cloning purposes so they can invade Earth.”

  “Ah, good old John from Thompson Road.” Patton says with a wry smile.

  “You know this guy?”

  “Every cop in a hundred kilometer radius knows him. He’s been calling in after every crime for as long as I can remember, UFO this, alien that. The man’s a nut job.”

  “Says the ghost Sheriff.” I te
ase. “Plenty of people describe Connie the same way for believing ghosts exist.”

  Patton grins. This is why I love him. I mean, you know, love him in a platonic, working-together-on-a-murder-investigation kind of way. He doesn’t take himself too serious.

  “Anything else in there? Apart from John?” He asks.

  I rifle through the papers, struggling to read some of the awful handwriting, then turn my attention back to the incident report. It staggers me that a trained police officer has left this file, in this state, to gather dust in a file cabinet. I sigh and continue inspecting each new sheet in turn.

  “Ada Green?” I ask, reading from a second incident report within the file. “That name mean anything to you?”

  “Nope.” Patton says. “What is it?”

  “An incident report, but it’s from a robbery. Wait, it’s seven years old. Does someone think there’s a link between the two?”

  Patton comes over to me, inspects the sheet over my shoulder. He’s so close I can feel his breath on my neck. If I wasn’t a married woman, well… that’s my business.

  “Hmm.” He murmurs, taking the sheet from me. “Strange.”

  “It is, right?” I say, watching him.

  “I don’t know why anyone would have connected the two. Different crimes, different towns - this one happened here in Rydell, see - and Ada Green was a lot older than Lola, so it doesn’t suggest a targeting of young women, for example.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.” I say.

  “Hold on.” He says, and turns the sheet over to examine the second side. In huge letters, a message has been scrawled across the back of the paper. “There’s no connection. This poor woman’s report was just used as scrap paper. Probably the closest thing this scruffy idiot had around when he took the call.”

  “So it’s not even relevant.” I say, dejected. The file’s empty now, there’s nothing else to go on.