Hayward was the least likely to go off the rails. His idea of a wild night probably used to run along the lines of staying up past eleven and having a second glass of port after dinner. Not much had changed since his death, though the port was no longer an option. Poor guy.
“How was the flight?” I asked, ready to move on from ghost talk.
“Can’t complain,” he replied. “At this point, I think I’m more comfortable on a plane than in most of the hotel rooms I end up staying in.”
I crossed the room and grabbed my beaded purse from the back of the couch. “Oh, come on now. The show isn’t exactly putting you up in flea-bag motels.”
Lucas chuckled. “You saying I’m spoiled?”
“Maybe a little bit,” I teased, flashing a grin as I slipped the long strap of my purse over my shoulder and draped it across my hip. The colorful beadwork complimented the simple navy shift dress I’d paired with black leggings and a pair of stacked sandals. It was the girliest thing I’d worn since … well, since the last time Lucas had been in town. “You need to get back to your globe-trotting roots. A few days backpacking through the Amazon oughta fire up your sense of adventure.”
“Not to mention make a three-star-hotel bed seem like a cloud straight from heaven.”
I laughed. “Exactly.”
“You know, I’ve actually been thinking it’s about time for me to get back out there. I have the next couple of months off from the show. All I’m missing is a travel buddy.” Lucas took a step closer to me and the temperature of the room seemed to jump ten degrees. He smiled down at me and brushed his fingers over the back of my hand. “You know anyone who might be interested in tagging along?”
My cheeks warmed and I ducked under the concealment of my copper hair that hung in loose waves, the result of a failed experiment with the curling iron earlier that evening. “As tempting as that sounds, I have a rampaging bridezilla who would probably go on a killing spree if I backed out of her wedding now.”
It was a flimsy half-truth. In reality, I had a creeping suspicion that Kimberly would pop the cork off one of her ridiculously expensive bottles of champagne and throw a little party if I told her I was unavailable.
I tugged at Lucas’s arm. “Come on, I’m starving.”
He hesitated but then relented and followed me out of the apartment and down the back stairs to a small, residents-only parking lot behind the row of shops. We crossed the street and Lucas helped me into his rental car and we set off up the coastline. I didn’t ask where we were going, opting to make small talk about the landmarks we passed on our way out of the small town instead. Twenty minutes later, we wound up at a fancy beach-side restaurant, dining on the moonlit back patio as the tide washed back in. Lucas didn’t raise the proposal of traveling together again, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it, which tainted the evening with a lingering heaviness.
“So, tell me, what kind of spooky escapades do you have planned for my visit?” Lucas teased as we started in on dessert. “Another murder mystery? Missing person? Haunted house?”
I glanced away and he tugged at my hand. He laughed. “Scarlet? I was just kidding.”
“Well … actually, there is this one thing.”
Lucas groaned.
“Don’t worry! It’s just a little pit-stop tomorrow evening. I can totally handle it.”
Lucas tilted his head, grinning at me. “I’m pretty sure that’s what you said last time.”
Chapter 3
“So, clearly, you can see why lake-stone blue for the ribbons is completely out of the question!” Kimberly droned the next afternoon.
Another day, another pseudo-crisis.
“Lake-stone blue?” Hayward repeated, looking in Flapjack’s direction. “Is that a real color?”
Flapjack hitched one of his shoulders. “Apparently.”
I shifted my eyes away from my companions and blinked. My eyelids felt like sandpaper. I’d stayed up way too late. If Gwen was around, she’d be begging and pleading for the details of my night out with Lucas, but oddly, she was nowhere to be seen. Unfortunately, Kimberly had burst through Lily Pond’s doors mere moments after I’d unlocked them and launched into a tirade about her color scheme, wondering why I hadn’t pointed out to her before that lake-stone blue clashes with the ivory of her dress. I was unaware that anything clashed with ivory, but she was insistent.
And loud.
So very, very loud.
Over the course of dinner with Lucas, I’d had a couple of glasses of wine and we’d ended up having a nightcap in his hotel room, which, as expected, was far above the two-star accommodations he’d made it out to be. I’d woken up slightly hungover and a little off my game.
Not that it would mean anything to Kimberly. I could be in traction at the hospital with pins and staples in every limb and she’d still find a way to march past the nurse’s station to inform-slash-berate me on the changes she was making to her arrangements because my judgment was so poor.
I stared down at the swatches and samples she’d piled before me. With careful fingers, I plucked off the one labeled with the offending color. “I think the lake-stone blue works, but if you want something else, that’s fine. I have an entire cupboard full of ribbons. We can find something you like.”
Kimberly looked horrified. I might as well have reached over the counter and backhanded her perfect face.
“I’m not talking about the ribbons anymore! I’m talking about the vases!” She scoffed, gawking at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot. “Honestly, I don’t know why the producers are being so stubborn about using your services.”
Hayward swooped in closer to my side, taking a protective posture. In reality, there was little he could do to help me, but it was comforting nonetheless.
I reached up and rubbed my temple, trying to stop my eye from twitching. “Right, right. Of course. It’s not a problem. We can go with the ivory ones you liked at your first consultation.”
Kimberly huffed and looked ready to start a new tirade when her phone rang. “Hello?” she barked into the slim phone.
I took a moment’s reprieve as she spun around on her stilettos and continued her sharp conversation. “Yes, I’m still with the flower woman.” She glared at me and then turned her back as if I was the one being rude.
“Flower woman?” Flapjack snarled.
Hayward shuddered. “I prefer to give people the benefit of the doubt, but this woman is simply reprehensible.”
I rolled my eyes and nodded hard enough that my head started to throb again. Kimberly’s voice rose and it became apparent that she was talking to her sister, Drea, again. “—don’t care if you have to pay extra! Just make sure it gets here in time!”
I had no idea what she was ranting about—I was simply grateful that I didn’t share DNA with the wretched woman.
Kimberly whipped back around, her face still pinched into a scowl. “Drea, stop whining! I have to go. Casper is on the other line.” Without hesitation, she clicked off one call, and in the millisecond between answering the other, her face completely rearranged itself like a high-speed Rubik’s cube, morphing from a nasty sneer to a bright, winner-of-the-beauty-pageant smile in half a heartbeat. “Casper, honey! Of course we’re still on for breakfast, Shnookums. I’ll be right there.”
“That was creepy as hell,” Flapjack said as her high-pitched greeting made us all flinch. “And that’s coming from a ghost.”
If it weren’t for the emotional whiplash I’d just experienced, his wry comment would have likely reduced me to giggles. As it was, I wondered if I should tell Sonya to start slipping sedatives into Kimberly’s tea. It couldn’t be healthy to have a cord wound that tight—it was bound to snap eventually, and when it did, I hoped I was well outside the blast zone.
When Gwen did finally show up, it appeared that my date with Lucas and her own midnight tryst were the last things on her mind. Her eyes were wide with alarm as she surged through the front door and she kept her arms wrappe
d around herself.
“Lady Gwen!” Hayward was the first to speak. “Are you all right?”
Gwen shook her head and then her eyes locked on mine. “Scarlet, something terrible has happened.”
I looked to Hayward and Flapjack. “What is it?”
“Last night, I was—” she paused, her eyes cutting to Hayward.
So she did know.
That was a quandary for another afternoon.
“I was out with a friend,” she continued. “We ran into Myra—you know, Myra Marsh, everyone calls her M&M.”
I nodded. “Of course I do.”
Myra was a regular at our weekly support group. She’d been dead for fifteen years and still wandered Beechwood Harbor, in complete denial about what unresolved issues were keeping her from moving on to the other side. To everyone else it was obvious. She spent nearly twenty-four hours a day haunting her daughter’s house at the edge of town.
They’d had an argument several years before and had stopped speaking to one another. The day Myra’s car lost traction on a winding road and crashed through the guardrail into an ancient oak tree, the two were preparing to meet for lunch for the first time in years.
I’d offered to go and speak to her daughter, to tell her whatever it was Myra had been planning to say that day, but Myra always declined. After a few months, it became clear that for all her talk about moving on, she wasn’t ready to leave. She couldn’t hold her grandson or buy him a bike for Christmas, but she liked watching him grow up and didn’t want it to happen without her, even though he had no idea she was there watching over him.
Gwen untucked her hand and flapped it. “Right, I don’t know why I said that.” She squeezed her eyes closed tight and then reopened them. “She said she’d been having weird spells. Moments where she would be standing in her daughter’s kitchen watching her grandson, and then she’d lose time and wake up a few hours later not remembering what had happened.”
“Wake up where?” I asked.
“Different places,” Gwen said. “Once, she said she woke up in someone’s attic. She’d never been to the house before and has no idea who lives there. She says she raced out as fast as she could. The next time, she woke up in the sporting equipment closet at the high school. Then, just two days ago, she says she woke up in the middle of the ocean, stranded in some kind of cave.”
“And she has no idea how she got to any of those places?” I asked.
Gwen shook her head. “No idea.”
“That is weird.” I tapped a finger on my lips. “And she’s always alone when she wakes up?”
“As far as I know,” Gwen replied.
“Ghost sleepwalking?” Flapjack offered in a rare moment of helpfulness.
I shrugged one shoulder. “It’s possible, I suppose. I’ve never heard of something like that before, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”
Naturally, ghosts don’t need sleep, but that was the closest term for the deep meditative state of mind they could slip into. For some ghosts, it was simply a way to decompress or pass the time. Then there were ghosts like Gwen, who I was certain never took a moment away from the action. Even in the dead of night, she always seemed to have someplace to be, or, more likely, subjects to watch.
“I’ll talk to her if you want,” I offered. “Or she can bring it up on Sunday for the next meeting. Maybe someone else will have a better theory about what’s going on.”
“What if she disappears again before Sunday? Maybe she won’t come back this time!”
“Gwen, hold up,” I said, keeping my voice calm and soothing. “Let’s not spin this out of proportion. I think it’s weird, but it doesn’t sound dangerous.”
“No kidding,” Flapjack interjected, twisting his nose as he looked up at Gwen. “What’s the worst that could happen? She can’t die again. Scar can’t be everyone’s Yoda. You’re all lucky she tries at all!”
Gwen’s eyes widened as they flew to me. “I’m sorry, Scarlet. I didn’t mean to—”
I stopped her with an open palm. “It’s all right. Flapjack is just feeling overly protective today.”
Flapjack bristled.
“For good reason,” Hayward said, chiming in for the first time. “That awful Kimberly woman was just here, raising a ruckus for poor Lady Scarlet.” He shot Gwen a look as if to imply she should have been there to witness the exchange.
Gwen sighed. “Again?”
“Afraid so.” I moved to the computer and pulled up the day’s orders. In all of Kimberly’s swirling chaos, I’d lost track of my usual morning routine. As the computer processed the batch of orders, I went to my small office and clicked on the miniature, four-cup coffee pot. The smell of rich, cocoa-infused coffee filled the air and I took a moment to breathe deeply and center myself before going back to the front counter. Lizzie would be arriving within a few minutes; she was accident-prone but delightfully punctual. I needed to sort out any lingering ghost business before she came crashing into the shop.
Gwen and Hayward stood at opposite ends of the front retail space, coolly ignoring one another. Meanwhile, Flapjack twitched his tail, amusement shining in his sapphire eyes as they bounced back and forth between them.
My heart broke for Hayward. I’d hoped that eventually Gwen would see his true feelings and come around to him. Sure, he may as well have been from a different planet than her, and was significantly older, both as a human and a ghost, but still.
I stuffed my disappointment down and offered a sunny smile in an attempt to brighten the mood of the room. “Gwen, while you’re here, there’s something I wanted to ask you about.”
She turned around, a sly grin on her face. “What a coincidence—I had something to ask you too.”
I groaned, already knowing where she was headed. “Let me guess, Lucas?”
“Bingo!”
Gwen deals in gossip, the juicier the secret, the higher the currency. If I wanted to know about the late ex-Mrs. Barnes, I was going to have to pony up.
“All right, fine. I’ll tell you about last night, but first, what do you know about a Dr. Wilson Barnes? More specifically, his departed ex-wife Ruthie?”
“Ruth Barnes?” Gwen pulled a face. “Well, for starters, she’s a total harpy!”
My heart sank. “Of course she is.”
Gwen soared across the shop and took her usual perch on the counter. “Dr. Wilson is a respected OB/GYN who has a thriving practice one town over, but a large estate here in the Harbor. Ruth was a real shrew of a woman. Always accusing him of ogling other women, which was especially ironic, ya know, considering his job.”
Hayward coughed and headed for the door. “This sounds like a private conversation,” he said. “I’ll return this afternoon, Lady Scarlet. Good day.” He tipped his hat in my direction and then vanished.
Gwen’s smile slipped from her face as she looked down at her folded hands. “He’s angry with me, isn’t he?”
I bit my lip.
“Ha! Ya think?” Flapjack burst out.
“Not helping,” I told him as he launched up onto the counter and strutted along like he was on a—well, on a catwalk. “What happened between you two?” I asked, turning my attention to Gwen.
“Nothing! That was the whole problem.”
I sighed. “Gwen, you know Hayward is from a different time. He’s been around for a hundred years, but he’s held fast to his old-fashioned manners. I mean, honestly, I don’t know how many times I’ve told him that he doesn’t have to call me Lady Scarlet. He insists. It’s his way of showing respect.”
“I know. I know.” Gwen nodded and then sniffled. “I like him, Scarlet, I really do. I think it’s adorable that he wants to be all proper. But I can’t wait around forever.”
Flapjack snorted and I shot him daggers across the room. “What?” he asked, feigning ignorance. “She technically literally has forever.”
“That’s not the point,” I rebuffed.
Flapjack jumped down and stalked for the door, swi
shing his tail with each step. “Women.”
I picked up an empty gift box and chucked it in his direction, the cardboard hitting the wall moments after he’d slithered through it. “Damn cat,” I huffed. “I’m sorry about him, Gwen. If I could figure out how to get rid of him, I would.”
She smiled through her silvery tears. “No, you wouldn’t.”
I ground my teeth, even as I had to nod in agreement. He drove me to the edges of my sanity nine days out of ten, but for whatever reason, I liked having him around.
“What do you think I should do about Hayward?”
I sighed. “Just give him some time and space. He’ll rally and come back around.”
“Will you talk to him for me?”
I wasn’t sure what exactly I would say, but Gwen’s pleading eyes were impossible to refuse, so I nodded. “Sure, sure. Of course, I will.”
The printer fired off a series of pages and I took a beat to retrieve them. Gwen looked slightly more cheerful when I joined her at the counter. “What else do I need to know about Dr. Wilson and Ruthie?”
Gwen squared her shoulders. “They had a nasty divorce, mostly because she insisted on getting full custody of their two children. At the time of the divorce, their son was sixteen and their daughter was fourteen. She spread all kinds of rumors, trying to get people on her side. I’m not sure anyone listened, but it made for good popcorn drama.” She paused and considered me. “Why are you so curious about Dr. Wilson all of a sudden?”
“Oh, right, I guess that was kind of random.” I pulled my hair back into a low ponytail, preparing for the day’s work. “He came in here last night right at closing time to ask me to help him get rid of Ruthie. He thinks she’s haunting him.”
“Is she?” Gwen asked.
I shifted my gaze to her. “Wouldn’t that really be your area of expertise?”
Gwen giggled. “Fair enough. I actually didn’t realize she was still hanging around. She died about a year ago.”
“How long had they been divorced?”
Ghosts Gone Wild: A Beechwood Harbor Ghost Mystery (Beechwood Harbor Ghost Mysteries Book 2) Page 3