Close to Home

by K. J. Emrick

  In the lineup of the driveway I saw James’s shiny black Dodge Charger. He was here ahead of me. A tiny part of my mind reasoned out that he had to have been here before I sent that message to him. I knew I should’ve sent him one sooner. Well. Can’t be fixed now.

  It wasn’t important now, either. The only thing that mattered to me right now was making a beeline for Kevin, standing out there on the front lawn, giving instructions to two more officers. They must’ve called in everyone who worked at the police force here. All five of them.

  He saw me coming, and with a last word for his man, he met me on the lawn, apart from everyone.

  “Is it him?” I asked, before he said a word.

  His arms folded around me, and we held each other. It was all the answer I needed. The tears that I’d been able to keep back until then came out in force, and I was glad he was holding me because I don’t think I could have stood up on my own otherwise.

  “How did ya know?” he asked me after a moment where I was sure he shed a few tears, too. “How did ya know it was Dad?”

  Because I’ve spoken to his ghost… no. Not the time for that, even now. “I had a feeling,” I told him instead, snuffling a breath. That was true as far as it went. “Oh. And I was just talking to Mick Pullman. He reminded me that he fixed up the bricks in that fireplace right when your father disappeared on us. It fit. If we’d only known. Oh, Kevin. If we’d only checked on Mick’s work, we might have found him.”

  I felt him tense up. “Pullman redid the fireplace. Yeah. I remember that. He put those bricks in place. Right over where Dad’s body…” The wheels in his head were turning toward something, although I didn’t know what. Then he seemed to change topics entirely. “Ya know what this means, right? Dad never left ya, Mom. He never ran off on us.”

  “I know,” I said quietly. “He was a good father. A good husband. I feel terrible, Kevin, I divorced him and I’ve been so mad at him for so very long I just don’t know… what I can…”

  “It’s all right, Mom.” He hugged me again and then let me stand on my own feet again. “We didn’t know. None of us did.”

  The strain in his voice was making his smooth Aussie accent come out strong and clear. He’d worked so hard to not sound like his father for so long. Richard was a dyed-in-the-wool Australian, proud of his heritage and never once had he ever tried to sound more like an American or a Brit or anyone other than someone from the heart of our native country.

  Kevin, on the other hand, had gone off to college and come back sounding more like me than Richard. I hadn’t minded. Especially after we thought Richard ran off. In moments like this, when he was stressed, Kevin sounded more and more like his father.

  Fitting, considering today was the day we found him.

  “How did you know?” I asked him back. “How did you know it was Richard in there?”

  His face darkened. “Wasn’t much left of his, um. He doesn’t look like him. He was wrapped up tight in that tarp, he was, so it’s no wonder we didn’t smell anything funny, but still. It’s not pretty. He had his wallet in his pocket, is how I knew. Then I could see it. It’s him, Mom. No doubt.”

  I nodded. Of course. We knew his wallet was gone. It was one of the things at the time that made us believe he’d run off. Took his money and his ID with him. Now, here he was.

  Here he was.

  I looked up past Kevin, and there he was. Richard. He was standing there, just like I remembered him, so handsome and tall and strong. It was his ghost, of course, and not really him. I knew that. It still made me catch my breath. His thick, wavy black hair. His eyes that were a curious mix of hazel green that darkened to brown around his pupils. He watched us, wearing the clothes I had last seen him in, so many years ago, and he smiled a sad smile.

  I smiled back at him. “Richard,” I whispered. “We love you.”

  “Sure we do,” Kevin agreed, even though he couldn’t see what I did. He was speaking from his heart. “Mom, we’re just about done in the Inn. We’ve got pics and we’ve swept the inside of that wall for any trace evidence. The fireplace too. Didn’t find much. Just his wallet, and this.”

  He held up a plastic evidence bag, sealed with red tape to guard against tampering. Inside it, I could see a little chunk of something. A multi-sided, cloudy pink crystal about three inches long. On one end it was tapered to a point. The other end looked like it had been broken off. I’d seen kids grow these in home science kits. It was probably broken off from a larger chunk.

  “Why in God’s name would he have that?” I asked, speaking my thoughts out loud.

  “Don’t know.” Kevin rolled the bag up and put it back into his front pocket. “He had it in his hand. Not something I’m gonna enjoy remembering, searching my own father’s dead body.”

  Anyone who didn’t know him would see only the stalwart senior sergeant, stone faced, doing his job. I was his mother. I saw the set of his jaw. I saw the way he stood with his back just a bit too stiff. He was upset. More than that, he was hurting. Just like me.

  “No one’s going to say anything if you step aside on this one,” I told him. “You know that.”

  “I do.” He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly again. “I also know I just took over as senior sergeant after the ratbag before me got tossed out. Folks here in Lakeshore need to know they can depend on me. I step down now, even temporarily, don’t know if I’ll be able to keep their support.”

  “You’re not Cutter,” I assured him.

  “Too right I’m not. I’m Richard Powers’ son.”

  It was a strong statement, and I felt my heart lift a little at the heat in his words. I had been afraid for so long that Kevin would go the rest of his life hating a father who had abandoned him. Maybe he had, for a while. Now that we knew it wasn’t Richard’s fault, he was free to love his father again.

  So was I.

  Oh, now that was a weird thought. I could love my dead husband again. Forgive him. Well, I already had forgiven him. I just… How could I love a man who was dead and gone?

  His ghost was still there, still watching me with those eyes I remembered so well.

  My heart went out to him. Yes. I was still in love with my ex-husband.

  We now knew that however Richard had ended up tucked inside that wall, he didn’t do it to himself. Someone had killed him and put him there. He was a victim.

  I was going to find out who did that to him. Me and Kevin, together. Our family.

  All of us.

  “We need to call your sister,” I said abruptly.

  A frown twisted Kevin’s lips. “Not looking forward to that convo.”

  “No. Me either. But she deserves to know.”

  He looked away, toward the Inn and the Coroner’s van still in the drive. “You’re right, Mom. I’ll leave that for you to do, if ya don’t mind. Last time I tried to talk to Carly it wasn’t exactly a brilliant family reunion.”

  “She took it bad, when Richard disappeared.”

  “We all did. Difference is, we didn’t cut ourselves off from the world.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “I’ll call her. Soon. How did you get the Coroner here so fast?”

  “I put in the call when we first found the body… um. When we got the call that you found him. Figured we’d need their help.”

  True enough. The thought of Richard being autopsied made my stomach twist. “I don’t want to see him. Not like that.”

  “It’s okay, Mom. I get that. You’re gonna be all right?”

  “No. Not today.” I managed a smile for him, holding onto my unicorn necklace talisman. “Maybe tomorrow. Time moves on, you know.”

  He nodded. “So ya keep telling me. Might believe it, one of these days.”

  “Look at how far you’ve come, Kevin. All grown up. Got a good woman at your side and you’re the senior sergeant of your home town. Time has been good to you.”

  “Not to Dad.”

  “No,” I admitted sadly. “Kevin, I want to talk to you abo
ut something. Just… I need to talk to James first. Okay?”

  “You said that earlier, too. This must be something serious you need to talk to me about.”

  “It is, but it can wait. So, um. James is inside?”

  Kevin nodded. “Been looking for ya. Man wears his feelings on his sleeve where it comes to Dell Powers. Hard to miss it.”

  “I know.” I looked sheepishly over at where Richard’s ghost had been, but he was gone again.

  Leaving Kevin there, I went to the door of the Inn. Inside, the foyer was packed. Guests, police officers, and people I didn’t know, all standing around and talking.

  All the talking stopped, the second I walked in.

  I almost felt like I should give a speech. All the faces watching me were expecting me to say something, either to give them gossip to spread or a bit of wisdom about life in general. I didn’t have either.

  At the back of the crowd, near a quiet corner, I saw Lachlan Halliburton’s face. The ghost from the 1800s that still haunted my Inn. He smiled at me, a little secret smirk that showed just how sadistically thrilled he was at my discomfort. We had an uneasy truce, me and him, but the man is insufferable. My resident gentleman thief was a constant thorn in my side. If we were alone, I’d put him in his place. Again.

  But we weren’t alone. I was drowning in a sea of faces, friends and strangers both, and my ex-husband’s body was in my driveway, in a coroner’s van, waiting to be transported. I felt like I was suffocating.

  Thankfully, James came over and saved me.

  He was tall and handsome, with that windswept blonde hair that always looked so cute on a man our age, and blue eyes that I’ve spent several nights gazing into for hours on end. There was a frown between those eyes now, and I wasn’t paying attention to his looks or how his strong arms and chest filled out his button up or how his jeans hugged the lines of his legs as he shot across the room to me. He was here for me, and that’s what I cared about.

  “Come on, now,” he whispered to me, even though every ear in the room would hear in this dead silence.

  Okay. Poor choice of words.

  He took my arm and we threaded through the crowd. One of the officers tipped his cap to me and promised they’d be out of my way soon as possible. I thanked him. I think I even smiled.

  The parting glance I shot Lachlan wasn’t a smile. It was enough to make him fade back through the walls and disappear.

  James turned his frown over at that part of the rom, wondering what I was glaring at.

  Then we were in the dining room, full of people being served a late lunch or an early dinner, people who wanted to be where the action was. Lots of people from town. Not a one of them said a word to me as James escorted me back into the kitchen. They just stopped talking, and watched us go.

  “James, wouldn’t it be more private up in my room?”

  “No doubt,” he agreed. “But Rosie wants to see ya, too. She’s worried.”

  Rosie’s face reflected those words.

  The kitchen was humming with activity. The three cooks working today in their white smocks and matching paper hats were busy grilling chicken and cutting vegetables and Rosie was pacing to and fro giving directions like a maestro conducting a symphony. When she saw me and James come in through the swinging door from the dining room she stopped mid-sentence and spun away from the cook boiling noodles, to his obvious relief.

  “Oh, Dell!” she blurted out.

  She came around the corner of the center island and her apron, already stretched tight around her baby bump, snagged on the handle of a pot that spun and dipped toward the edge, ready to spill its contents across the floor.

  The cook making the noodles was ready. He caught the pot with a hastily grabbed towel to mitten his hands, and set it to rights again. Rosie’s staff knew about her clumsiness. It was getting worse now with the awkward stages of pregnancy. They didn’t let it bother them. She was still the best chef any of us knew.

  And the best friend I have.

  She caught me in an ungainly hug, leaning in over her stomach, and the span of her bottom knocked over a neat stack of plastic drinking tumblers. The tumblers tumbled away to the floor. She never even noticed.

  “Dell, where’ve ya been?” Rosie asked me. “Oh, it’s so terrible. So awful. I can’t believe your hubby was… all the time… I just can’t believe it. I always liked Richard. He was such a good man.”

  That’s funny to hear, because when Richard first went… missing, Rosie was full of some very choice words about his character. None of them nice.

  Of course, I spent more than a few nights cursing him out myself. That’s something I’ll have to live with, now that I know what actually happened to him.

  She hugged me again, and then stepped back, hands on my shoulders. Then she hugged me again.

  “Rosie, it’s all right,” I told her. “I would’ve been here but I went out looking for Barnaby Thorne. See, Pastor Albright’s dog went missing and he said… never mind. I was looking for Barnaby when Kevin called me to come back here. That’s where I was.”

  “Oh, ya mean the youngest Thorne boy?” Rosie nodded, her lips tight. “Mm-hmm. I know him. Heard things about him, I mean. Bad family. Got some serious issues.”

  With everything going on I’d forgotten about my little talk with Barnaby’s mother until now. Rosie was right. There was definitely some issues in that family. “Do you think Barnaby might steal a dog? The pastor’s dog?”

  “Oh, I think he’d steal the communion wafer from a Catholic priest at Christmas Mass, if he had the chance.” She shrugged. “Some kids are just born that way.”

  I wasn’t so sure that I agreed with that.

  James took my hand. “So that explains where you were.”

  There was a veiled question, almost an accusation, in that. I chewed at the inside of my cheek for a moment before I said, “I should’ve called you before, James. I’m sorry. I didn’t think about it till after, and then we found out it was really Richard, and everything was just so crazy.”

  Which was all true, but that wasn’t the real reason I hadn’t thought to call him before. James was a good man. He was good to me. Since Christmas, after nearly breaking up, we’d grown very close again.

  I just didn’t know if I’d ever be as close to any man as I’d been with my husband, Richard. Guess I was still learning how to be in love again.

  Maybe I’d never really have what I’d lost when my husband ran off on me.

  No, I corrected myself. When he was killed.

  A sob shook me, and James took his turn holding me this time. “No worries,” he promised me. “I was just anxious when ya didn’t call. Can’t imagine what you’re feeling.”

  I was still searching for the words to thank him when Rosie set a plate of something down on the center island counter next to me.

  “Here. Have something to eat, Dell. Always makes me feel better when I can eat good food!”

  Leave it to Rosie.

  “I’m not hungry,” I said. “I just ate down at Cathy’s Milkbar.”

  “Oh, moonlighting on me, are ya?” She laughed, although I could tell it was forced. “That’s fine. Cathy runs a good place. Not as good as mine, understand. She uses too much garlic in the sauce, if ya ask me. Gotta keep the balance with the spice or the whole thing goes to pot. Had a roast last week that came out dry as a bone and only thing saved it was the sauce I made from scratch with a few onions and… oh.”

  She seemed to realize she was babbling on and put her two hands up to her mouth, clutching her apron with it, catching the edge of the tray that she’d set down with food for me and threatening to spill it across the pristine linoleum of the kitchen floor.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, ahead of a loud sob. “I’m just so upset.”

  I reached around her wide shoulders and hugged her close. “Me too, Rosie. Me too. I was sitting at the Milkbar just fine, and then Mick Pullman reminded me that he fixed our fireplace up back when Richard went mis
sing. Never put it together until today, when we found his… when we found him.”

  After a moment of us two friends consoling each other, I felt James put his hand on the small of my back. “Did you say Mick Pullman did that job of rebricking the fireplace?”

  “Sure did,” Rosie answered for me, some heat coming into her voice. “That’s why we had to fix it again today! Man’s a disgrace to every sort of craftsman out there. Well. I suppose we should be grateful for sloppy work, else we’d never have found Richard. I guess.”

  There was a funny look in James’s eyes. It wasn’t far different from what I’d seen in Kevin’s outside, when I’d mentioned Mick and the fireplace.

  “Excuse me,” he said, leaving me with a kiss on my temple.

  “So what do we do now?” Rosie asked, once James was gone. I knew exactly what she meant, and I knew exactly what my answer was going to be.

  “Business as usual. The Inn is open for business. We honor every reservation, we serve breakfast lunch and dinner.”

  “Oh, but Dell…” Rosie grasped for the words to express her feelings. “Finding a dead man buried inside the Inn was bad enough, but now it’s your own husband we’re talking about.”

  “I know, Rosie. I’ll make funeral arrangements and such, but there’s nothing to be done with that until they release his, um, body. For now, we’ve a business to keep in the black, and you and your hubby need money for the baby. We can’t stop just because tragedy hit me.”

  “Us, dear,” she corrected me, hugging me to herself again. “I’m right here. So’s all the staff.”

  I knew that was true. I just wasn’t sure it made me feel any better.

  “Dell?” Rosie asked after a moment, hesitantly letting go of me. “What happened to your Richard?”

  I really wish I had an answer for her. I just didn’t.

  But I knew someone who would.

  I speak to the ghosts in the Inn all the time. I’ve gotten really good at dropping a word here or there so the guests think I’m talking to them, or to myself, while I tell my ghostly friends a thing or two. Rumors of the Pine Lake Inn being haunted are already starting to circulate thanks to Lachlan’s habit of knocking against the walls, and the way Jess likes to move things around.