Close to Home

by K. J. Emrick

  Ghosts. All a bunch of showoffs, if you ask me.

  Still, if I want to have a longer conversation with any of the three spirits I’ve got wandering round these halls, then I have to be somewhere private. The hint of a ghost story might draw in a few curious guests, but the idea that the Innkeeper is nutters won’t do anything good for business. Might land me in the loony bin, too.

  My room is the best place that I’ve found for these more private convos with my ghostly neighbors. Sometimes I can find them wandering the grounds outside, down by the trees around the lake, or whatever. That’s hit or miss. My room works better.

  No one thinks twice about it now as they see me start up the stairs. I’ve got every reason to be upset, and every reason to want some private time. Thing is, I really am upset, and I really do need some privacy. Sure won’t be getting it down in the foyer where Kevin’s new police officers are still trying to keep the looky-loos away from the fireplace. So I’ve got good reason to head up to my room, and no one’s going to look crossways at me for doing it.

  The Inn is laid out so that the stairs from the first floor go up to the rooms on the second, and then the second floor hallway takes you down to the stairs at the other end that go up to the third floor. If I ever renovate the building, I’ve been told I’ll need to add an elevator for handicapped access. With a frown, I realize that I might have to do that sooner than I’d expected, depending on what kind of damage we find after removing a body from behind the fireplace.

  Richard’s body. My dead ex-husband.

  Exactly who I was looking to find up in my room.

  On the second floor, Mister Brewster is at the door to his room. He always rents out the same room. The man practically lives here.

  Staring at me with those strange eyes of his, he slowly gives me a nod, and then before I realize it he’s closing the door behind him.

  I’ve always thought he was an odd man. There’s something more to him than what I know, that’s for certain. There aren’t any Brewsters in Lakeshore, so I suppose his family is from outside town. If he has any family at all. Mister Brewster. Mister… something… Brewster. I try to recall his first name but it escapes me for the moment. Strange. I’ve seen the name in the registration book any number of times, and I’ve processed his payment for the room as many more.

  Then, to add to the strange factor, there was that cryptic message of his from before, warning me not to look behind the bricks of the fireplace. How would he know? None of us knew what we were going to find back there. How did he?

  And if he knew what was in the walls…

  Oh, snap.

  Mister Brewster has stayed at this Inn for as long as I can remember. Since Richard was alive and well and standing beside me, to be sure. So, he was here when Richard died, too.

  My thoughts went to a dark place. The killer had to have access to the Inn. There wasn’t any doubt that Richard was killed, and killed here. Not in my mind there wasn’t. People don’t wrap themselves up in a tarp and then crawl inside the empty space between interior and exterior walls to wait to die by suffocation or starvation, or both. That just didn’t happen.

  Someone had killed my husband. Someone with a dark side. Someone who lived or came here often.

  I snuck past Mister Brewster’s room very slowly, and very quietly. I didn’t like what I was thinking, but I didn’t see any way to avoid thinking about it, either.

  Mister Brewster just became my first suspect.

  Richard would have answers for me. If I could just reach through to him, he could tell me who killed him. I’d never asked him before, for a variety of reasons. I knew he was dead but I’d never asked how it happened. I hadn’t wanted to know.

  I was going to ask now.

  Finally up in my room I closed and locked the door for good measure. Mine’s the room at the far end of the third floor. It’s a little bigger than the others. Maybe not so grand as room number nine, the Honeymoon Suite, but bigger than the others to be sure. I’ve arranged it with personal touches to suit my needs, because this space became my apartment after I gave up the house Richard and I had kept together. A red closet built into the wall on the right side was one of the things I’d added. My bed, with its four wooden posts holding up a canopy of pink ruffles, was another. Pink walls and pink shelves. The bathroom off to the side, the only other part of my living space, had pink seashells decorating the walls.

  Personal touches for a woman living alone.

  Well, not so much alone anymore. Not with my ghostly friends hanging about. Speaking of which.

  Sitting down on the edge of the bed, facing the television and little entertainment center, I breathed out, clearing my mind, trying to reach out for a presence in the room.

  I’ve a friend who tried to teach me how to do this. I have a good enough handle on it now. Mostly.

  “Richard?” I feel foolish, trying to sense my dead ex-husband. Sometimes I really can, and it warms me inside to know we still have that kind of a connection, especially now that his death is closer to home…

  My eyes popped open. A flutter of something was brushing up against my mind. There’s someone else here with me. Not a living someone. The spirit of someone very close, very personal, almost intimate…

  His name died away on my lips. Not Richard.

  Jess.

  Her blonde ponytail bobbed up and down as she moved closer to me without seeming to take a step. She studied my face as she did, and the disappointment I felt must have been written loud and clear there.

  She stuck her tongue out at me.

  That’s the Jess I remember.

  “Don’t give me that look,” I said, finally free to talk to her. “I was expecting, um, someone else.”

  She didn’t quite roll her eyes, but she did nod her head in an understanding way. Skimming close, she sat down with me on the edge of the bed, and I wanted nothing more than to put my arm around her and cry it out like we used to do in University when things went wrong.

  “Did you know?” I asked. “Did you know his body was down there?”

  Her expression remained oddly blank as she nodded once more.

  “Great.” The sarcasm in my voice is thick enough to choke an elephant. “You couldn’t have mentioned that to me at some point?”

  Letting her head roll to one side, she seemed to suck in a deep, deep breath, and then opened her mouth to scream at me with this comically eyes-squeezed-shut expression.

  There’s no sound to it, just the expression.

  “Right, right,” I admit. “You’re a ghost. You can’t talk. I get it. But you’ve talked to me in my dreams, and you’ve left me messages on the mirror, and Lachlan nearly curdled my blood with a scream from the other side once. You don’t think you could’ve found some way to say oh, by the way Dell, your husband’s tucked up in the wall?”

  For a long moment she sat perfectly still. Then she shrugged.

  “Fat lot of help you’re being. Where’s Richard? His spirit’s still round here, isn’t it?”

  Her expression turned serious, and as I watched, she started to fade until she was just a fuzzy impression of herself.

  Then she snapped back into focus, staring at me, waiting for me to get her latest game of charades.

  “I know,” I said in frustration. “He’s having trouble reaching through from the other side. Seems he could make an effort for this, don’t it?”

  For a long time, Richard’s spirit was a voice on the phone lines that I could barely hear, let alone recognize. Then I saw his face appear on a wall. Yes, that same wall we have so much trouble with. The wall that Richard’s body was hidden behind.

  Jess arched her brows. Fine. I missed all the clues, too.

  In the last few weeks though, he’d been coming through clearer to me. I could sit with him here in my room, if only for a few seconds. I could feel him hold me at night. Nothing more than that, but still. I was hoping he’d gotten the hang of it good enough to come to me now, today, when I ne
eded him most.

  Guess I was out of luck.

  Tears welled again, but I snuffled them back, stubbornly holding onto my emotions. “Someone killed my husband, Jess. It hurts. A lot. But I need to find out who did this to him… oh. Is that why he’s having trouble coming across? Is it something to do with that? He can’t come to me until the mystery is solved?”

  Staring at me until I finished voicing my racing thoughts, Jess put a finger up to the tip of her nose. Bingo.

  “So go ask him who did it!” I blurted out. “Make him tell you, then you can come tell me. Right? You guys all talk, don’t you? You and Lachlan and Richard and whoever the devil else is here at the Inn? All sit round having tea and flipping scones and discuss who’s going to win the next cricket match?”

  The look she gave me told me just how stupid the suggestion was. I knew it was daft, but my point was that the ghosts at the Inn had to talk to each other. Jess and Lachlan always knew what was going on well before I did. Besides, who else did they have to talk to?

  “Where do you go when you’re not here talking to me, Jess?”

  Her look changed in a blink. Dark hair. A slinky dress, sneakers. A young woman headed out to the pubs for the night.

  I smiled, because I got the message, the answer to my question. Where did Jess go when I didn’t see her?

  Wherever she wanted to. That was my Jess.

  “I just want to know who killed him,” I said to Jess, again. “Can’t you find that out for me? Please?”

  She reached out to hug me, transparent arms fading away to mist, and then she was gone. Just… no longer there.

  I sat for the longest time, right there on my bed, wondering. Was that a yes, or a no?

  A hand, feather light and unexpected, trailed across my shoulder, through my hair.

  “Richard?” I gasped, knowing that touch, remembering every time I’d let myself be soothed by those strong fingers. Turning hopefully to look behind me I reached out, his name once more on my lips.

  No one was there. A breeze stirred the curtains on my windows. Nothing more.

  Chapter 5

  The knock on my door made me jump.

  Off the bed, on my feet again, I waited for the world to stop spinning under me. What’s a girl got to do to get some normalcy in her life, anyway?

  Not live in Lakeshore, that’s what.

  “Just a minute,” I called out. I was pretty sure it was a real person knocking on the door and not some spectral hand. Ghosts don’t usually knock before they enter your room.

  Something to sleep on, that is.

  “Dell, it’s me,” James said from the other side of the door. “Look, I can come back later if you…”

  “No. No, it’s fine.” I rubbed away the rest of the traitorous tears from my eyes and then dried my hands on the backside of my jeans. “Hold on.”

  Unlocking my door for him, I slipped into his arms, taking comfort in the warmth of the current man in my life. I beat down any and all thoughts that compared him to my Richard. James is here. Richard is gone. Sort of.

  Life moves on.

  “I, er, have some news,” he said to me.

  “Oh, James. I think I’ve had enough news to last me a lifetime today.”

  “Figured. My editor’s already clamoring up me backside for this story.” His hands were smoothing up and down my back, and it felt so good. “This needs to be said, though. Don’t want ya reading it for the first time in the papers.”

  “What?” Now I did step back from him, no matter how nice his gentle massage was. “What’s happened?”

  He clutched my arms tighter, as if he knew my knees were about to give out on me with just one more word. “You remember what you said earlier?” he asked me. “The thing about Mick Pullman being the one to—?”

  “Rebrick the fireplace,” I finished for him. “I remember how interested you were when I said it. So, the man’s a lousy contractor. Learned my lesson the hard way.”

  James smiled down at me with that sort of pleasantly amused smile that he did so well. My husband used to smile at me like that too, when he thought I was being particularly naïve. I guess it’s a thing with me, if the men in my life pick up on it so easily.

  Stop it, I told myself harshly. James is James. Richard was Richard. I am not going to start comparing the two like this.

  Hard not to. I love them both so much.

  “Right,” I said, both to him and to my own thoughts. “So. What about Mick?”

  “Dell, doesn’t it strike ya funny that he’s the one what bricked the fireplace up, right as your husband disappeared, and now we find Richard stuck in behind there between the walls?”

  A ringing in my ears drowned out whatever he said next. I don’t remember moving back to the bed. I was just sitting there when I looked up again, and James was kneeling next to me, holding a hand to my back, concern mirrored like storm clouds in the light blue of his eyes.

  Mick Pullman. I hadn’t even considered that possibility. James had. His quick journalistic mind had put the pieces together into a picture that both made sense and answered a bunch of questions, too. I’d missed it. He hadn’t.

  Someone else had caught on to that possibility too, I realized.

  “Kevin.” I reached for James’s hand, only to find I was already holding it. “He thought the same thing, didn’t he? He was real interested in me talking about Mick Pullman.”

  “Yes,” James confirmed. “That’s who I went to talk to when I left ya in the kitchen with Rosie. Figured I’d find ya there when I got back.”

  “I came up here to… be alone,” I said, which was as close to the truth as I was willing to go for now. “James, we’ve lived here in town with Mick for years. I’ve had him do other work on the Inn, when I was in a pinch. He never had a quarrel with Richard. Never once said a cross word to my husband. Why would he…?”

  Stretching up on his knees, James kissed the side of my cheek. “Maybe that’s the mystery this time, Dell. Not the who, but the why of it.”

  I looked him square in the face, suddenly cross with him. “This isn’t some paperback mystery novel. This is my life.”

  He didn’t rise to the bait of my anger. “I know, Dell. I know how your life goes, too. Been a number of times ya turned sleuth to help a friend. Like Christmas, remember?”

  I did. Turns out it’s hard to forget being arrested for a crime you didn’t commit.

  “I’m just saying,” he went on, “that we usually have to figure out who did the deed, or however the made-for-TV movies put it. This time, maybe we found out who did this to your husband first, and now we have to figure out why. Wouldn’t that be a change of pace?”

  “Sure,” I admitted, not knowing where to go with that. Maybe it was that easy. Mick was the killer. He had the means. He had the opportunity.

  So what were his motives?

  “We should go find him,” I said weakly. Somehow, now that the whole mystery might be almost over, I felt drained. Like I’d been anticipating a fight that wasn’t going to happen and now I didn’t know what to do with myself. “We should find Mick and ask him for a statement. Ask him why he would have… why he would have…”

  “It’s all right,” James said, not making me finish the sentence. “Besides, your boy was two steps ahead of us. He already went for Mick. From what I understand, he’s got him down at the police station, already under arrest.”

  The murderer, already under arrest. Now, if this were good old Senior Sergeant Cutter taking someone into custody I’d be sure he got the wrong man. One of several reasons I was glad to see that bugger gone from town. Except, this was my son Kevin arresting Mick. It was Kevin’s father who had been murdered this time. He wouldn’t chance bringing in the wrong man.

  It looked like James was right. The mystery here would be finding out Mick’s motives.

  “Let’s go,” I said to him suddenly, after wrestling my thoughts into submission.

  He looked confused as I got up, taking a
few moments to step into the bathroom and wash my face with a cloth. I was only scrubbing away the tears and any stray soot marks from before. I don’t wear much makeup. James always tells me I don’t really need to. That’s another thing that he and my Richard had in common…

  Stop it. Just stop it.

  When I stepped back out, James was still there by the bed, still kneeling with an arm over the mattress.

  “What?” I asked him. “You didn’t think you were going to come in here and tell me the man who killed my husband is down at the police station, and ever once imagine that I’d just sit here on my hands, did you?”

  With a rueful shake of his head he pushed himself back up onto his feet. “Suppose not. Guess that’s why I love ya, Dell.”

  Those words stopped me at the door. Love. I did love James. I really did. Had that changed, now that I knew my husband wasn’t just dead, but murdered?

  No. No it hadn’t.

  But it sure complicated things.

  The police department was a single story building of stucco, the same dull white color as every other building in Lakeshore, and red brick. There was a large round sign bolted to the front that displayed the town emblem, a scraggly pine tree in the middle of the three differently shaped lakes of the town. “Lakeshore PD” was printed around the bottom. It was the only thing that designated the place for what it was.

  James held the door for me to go in first, and it squeaked closed behind us. In the short, narrow hallway inside, the sliding glass of the service window was closed, like always. Posters and advertisements were thumbtacked to the corkboard, the same ones that had been pinned there for years. By now, with all the times I’ve been here to see Kevin, I knew each one of them practically by heart.

  “We should knock?” James suggested.

  “My son’s the boss now, but I don’t get a key.”

  There’s still that little metal bell on the ledge at the window, and I dinged it with a little slap of my hand. Then I stood there, rocking on my heels, letting James smooth circles around the small of my back. I was more anxious to get in there than I realized. The man who killed my husband was inside. I needed to be in there. I needed to know what was going on.