by Nic Saint
“She told me she’s having trouble bending at the knees,” Bettina said ruefully.
“When you get to be my age, young Alice, you’ll see what I mean,” Mrs. Evergreen said. “I had both knees replaced, you know, and it’s just not the same. And it’s not just the knees. I had a hip replacement, too, and it’s still causing me trouble. Especially on rainy days like these.”
I looked up at the sky. There wasn’t a cloud in sight. In fact it was a glorious day, the sun high in the zenith and spreading its heat on all and sundry.
“It’s not raining,” I pointed out.
“Oh, but it’s gonna.” She tapped her shoulder. “I can feel it in my bones. Beats a barometer, young Alice. My bones never lie.”
I knew for a fact that the forecast said it was going to be gloriously sunny for ten straight days, but I knew better than to argue with this devious woman.
“We have a meeting,” I told Bettina. “Let’s go.”
Bettina tied the poo baggie with a tidy knot and made to hand it back to Mrs. Evergreen. But the latter held up her hand. “Oh, do be a dear and dispose of this for me, will you? I don’t like the way it smells up the house.”
“That’s why you need to put it in the trash,” I said, though it was hard to pronounce the words while grinding my teeth.
“I just put out the trash. And if I put this poo in a fresh bag it will stink up the place.”
“It doesn’t stink. The baggie is closed. The smell can’t escape. See?” I snatched the baggie from Bettina’s hand and held it under my nose, only to immediately remove it again. Gah. It stank to high heaven. What was she feeding this damn dog?
“See?” Mrs. Evergreen asked triumphantly. “It still smells.”
“You need to buy better bags,” I said. “These are rubbish.”
“They are the ones you recommend on the neighborhood watch website.”
“They are,” Bettina said sheepishly. “In fact I use them myself.”
“Then we’ll just have to change our recommendation, won’t we?” I asked, quickly losing my temper.
“I guess you will,” said Mrs. Evergreen, a dangerous flicker in her eyes.
I handed the baggie back to Bettina and stalked off without another word. I wasn’t going to let this woman get to me, I vowed, and then repeated the statement another dozen times like a mantra.
“And? How did it go?” Fee asked, also stepping down from the bakery van.
“It didn’t. The woman is evil. Pure evil incarnate.”
“You mean like Damien in The Omen?”
“Exactly like Damien, if Damien was a nasty old woman.” I turned back to Mrs. Evergreen, who still stood chatting amicably with Bettina. “She’s even tricked a member of our committee to go over to the Dark Side,” I said. “We just lost your aunt Bettina.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that. Bettina just likes to be nice to everybody.”
“Except to Mabel and Marjorie.”
“Well, that’s a given.”
“Could Mrs. Evergreen be responsible for Gemma’s murder? That way we could have her locked up for a good long stretch and she would never bother us again.”
Fee laughed and patted me on the head. “Don’t let her get to you, honey. She’s trying to get under your skin. It’s called psychological warfare.”
“Well, it’s working.”
We drove back to Bell’s Bakery in silence, Bettina following behind at a leisurely pace. I wondered what she’d done with Sheena’s poo baggie. I just hoped she’d dumped it in the park trash can and wasn’t bringing it along to the meeting. It would simply add insult to injury.
“About that kiss,” Fee began.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Oh.” She mimicked locking her lips with a key and throwing it through the window.
I heaved a tired groan and sagged in my seat. “I’m sorry. It’s just that this whole thing is getting to me. First Gemma with her incessant gabbing and nagging and now this evil old bat playing her psychological games…”
“So is Rock a good kisser?”
I laughed in spite of myself. “Yes, he is.” I thought back to the kiss. Though it hadn’t been the kind of kiss that rocks your world, it had been nice. And made me yearn for more where that came from.
“When this is all over you’re going to be thankful to Gemma for bringing you and Rock together,” Fee said in her infinite wisdom.
“I guess so. Oh, I forgot to tell you this morning. I talked to my dad about this police academy thing? Turns out he started the rumor just to protect my reputation.” I sighed. “My test results really were as bad as I thought. Probably worse.”
“Oh, honey,” Fee said, giving me a worried look. “Are you terribly upset about it?”
“Actually, I’m not,” I said, surprising myself. “I mean, I guess I accepted that I wasn’t going to be a cop a long time ago, so it doesn’t really affect me as much as I thought it would.”
“You’re a great leader of the watch,” she said. “So there’s that.”
“Yeah, a great leader who can’t even best a little old lady and her dog.”
“Well, Mrs. Evergreen is something else.”
“She sure is.”
We arrived at the bakery and Fee parked in the reserved spot. She’s usually the one who does the bread runs, but that morning one of her cousins had done the honors, so Fee could sleep in. I saw two Mini Coopers parked across the street, one red, one blue, and the third one, yellow, now slid right behind it. The committee was in session.
“I think we need to use hypnotherapy on Gemma,” said Mabel. “I read an article about it the other day in Reader’s Digest, and they’re getting some great results.”
“I don’t think you can hypnotize a ghost, Mabel,” Marjorie said. “No hypnotherapist is going to do it.”
“So maybe we should do it ourselves!” Mabel cried.
“You do it,” Marjorie said. “I don’t know the first thing about hypnosis.”
“Besides, what makes you so sure Gemma saw something?” asked Bettina. “She said herself that she doesn’t remember a thing.”
“That’s because that memory is locked inside her mind, which is refusing to let her relive the traumatic experience. It’s all right there in Reader’s Digest.”
“Since when is Reader’s Digest the how-to guide for murder investigations?” Marjorie wanted to know.
I was having cream cheese bagels for lunch, with a side salad, fries and a diet Coke. I was trying to cut back on the calories. Fee was munching down on a huge teriyaki chicken sub, Marjorie was having a cup of tea and scones, Bettina had made herself a stuffed croissant in the kitchen, and Mabel had treated herself to meatballs with crusty bread and cabbage. Yep, Bell’s Bakery didn’t just serve pastry. Fee’s family ran a full-service eatery.
All around us, the room was filled with lunchers, but we didn’t have to worry about our voices carrying or our words being overheard, because we could hardly be heard over the din. It’s amazing how good food can stimulate good conversation. Or a good argument, as in our case.
“I still think we should try hypnosis,” Mabel said stubbornly, stabbing at a meatball.
“Who else can we talk to?” I asked. “There must have been other people in Gemma’s life. What about her parents?”
“They moved away,” Fee said. “I think she told me once they live in Texas now. The only reason she stayed was because she had a great job here, and Chad, of course.”
“Maybe we should have another chat with the Chadster?” I said.
“I saw him this morning,” Fee said. “He came into the bakery.”
“Did you ask him about Gemma?” Marjorie asked.
“I did. He said the funeral has been arranged for the day after tomorrow, and Gemma’s parents and family are flying in.”
I stared at my cream bagel. I wondered how Gemma would respond to her funeral. Most ghosts I’d encountered hated being buried. It felt so… final.
“Is Charlie doing the funeral?” asked Mabel.
I nodded. “I guess so.” I knew the body had been released by the coroner’s office, and Uncle Charlie had taken possession of it. I so didn’t want to be there to help him fix her up. It’s different when it’s a person you’ve known since kindergarten. Makes you a little too conscious of your own mortality.
“Are the police getting anywhere?” asked Fee.
Marjorie shook her head. “They’re nowhere on this. Virgil says Rock is getting very frustrated. It’s his first case for the Happy Bays PD and he wants to make an impression.”
Well, he sure made an impression on me, I thought. Though that probably wasn’t what Marjorie was referring to. Fee gave me a cheeky grin. She was thinking the exact same thing.
“What happens when they don’t find the killer?” asked Bettina.
“Nothing,” said Marjorie.
“I mean, aren’t they going to bring in the FBI or something?”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “Unfortunately for Gemma her case will simply turn into a cold case, her murderer never found. It happens more than you can imagine.”
“Well,” I said, “then let’s make sure it doesn’t happen to Gemma.”
Chapter 17
The meeting was still in full swing when I got a text from my mother. She wanted me to clean up my room. It seemed like a throwback to the time when I was still living at home and she would habitually accuse me of making a mess of my room. It took me a few moments to realize what she meant. Rock was moving in, and if I didn’t want him to see my childhood memorabilia, I needed to remove it before it was too late.
“I need to go,” I told Fee. “I need to clean up my room.”
“That’s all right,” she said. “I know Rick’s been complaining about how messy you are but I set him straight. I told him that if I can live with you for three years without a hitch, so can he.”
I stared at her, aghast. “Rick thinks I’m messy?”
“Isn’t that why you want to clean up your room?”
“No! Mom wants me to clean up my old room because Rock is moving in.”
She grinned. “Oops.”
“I think he must be mistaking me with Reece. He was the messy one, not me.”
“Well, you do like to leave your clothes lying about until they start smelling funny, honey. Rick keeps collecting them and dumping them in the hamper.”
Mortified, I cried, “Rick collects my dirty clothes?”
“Yup, he does. I think he knows better what you wear than I do.”
Oh, God. I buried my face in my hands.
“It’s not so bad. He’s very discreet about it. He’ll never tell a soul. Well, except for me, of course. He tells me all the time. And I keep telling him he should leave your stuff alone already. I blame his dad. If he hadn’t divorced Rick’s mother and then gotten remarried a dozen times, Rick would have had a normal childhood. Now all he ever knew were nannies and housekeepers, and they ran a pretty tight ship.”
“Tell him to stay away from my undies from now on.”
“I can’t, honey. It’s like a disease. He can’t see anything out of place. He’s very OCD about it. Which is probably why he and Reece never got along.”
“Reece was a slob.” A very charming slob, but still a slob. He was a Hollywood superstar, of course, and apparently used to other people picking up after him. Just like Rick now did with me. “Okay, I promise I’ll do better,” I said. “And now I have to clean up my old room, so Rock won’t lose respect for me.”
“Why would Rock lose respect for you?”
“One word. One Direction.”
“That’s two words. And I thought the way you fangirled One Direction was cute. You even stalked Harry Styles online, remember?”
“Please don’t remind me. I was very young and very stupid.”
“Not so young. It’s only been, what, like five years?”
I shivered. “You’re never going to let me live it down, are you?”
Fee grinned. “Never.”
I arrived at my parents’ place, dumped my bike against the fence and stalked inside. This was the second day in a row Mom had gotten me out here. It was probably some kind of record. I heard noises upstairs and took the stairs two at a time. When I peered into my room, I saw that Mom had already started moving my stuff around. My bed was still there, and my old desk, where Dad had dumped a pile of his police procedural books and his desktop computer but had never actually spent a minute to do some actual work. I think the smoky eyes of Harry Styles staring at him from the poster over my desk had probably scared him off. And if not that, then probably the one of Zayn Malik that hung suspended over my bed, naked torso and all. Yep. My horrible teenage crimes were coming back to bite me in the ass.
“I’ve already removed all your Hello Kitty stickers,” Mom said. “Though I think we should probably repaper, don’t you think?”
“No way, Mom. I don’t have time to redo the room right now. Can’t Dad chip in?”
“He says he can’t.” She looked around. “Oh, well. I guess it’ll do for now.”
“Where is Rock going to sleep? Not in my old bed, right?”
When Mom was conspicuously silent, I groaned. “Come on, Mom. You can’t put the guy in my old bed. That’s just wrong on so many levels!”
“I don’t see why we have to remove a perfectly good bed. We got it when you graduated, and the mattress is still fine.” She bumped down on the mattress. “See? It doesn’t even squeak.”
“That’s because it’s latex. Latex doesn’t squeak.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sure it’ll do for a couple of weeks. And I’m sure it’s better than what he has got at the Inn right now.” She gestured at the window. “He’s even got a view.”
I walked up to the window, my arms crossed in front of my chest. The old willow tree was still staring back at me when I looked out. On dark and rainy winter nights that tree used to scare the bejeesus out of me, with its skeletal arms tapping against the side of the house, casting shadows across the ceiling. Though I didn’t think it would scare Rock. He was made of sterner stuff than me.
“I can still tell him I’ve changed my mind,” Mom said, watching me pace the floor. “I know how you always liked this room.”
“No, it’s fine, Mom. I’ll help you pack up and move all my stuff out.”
For the next hour or so, we emptied out the desk and the closet and put all my old stuff in boxes, then carried them up the stairs to the attic. My old report cards, my photo albums, my CD collection, my school books… It was a weird sensation holding my entire childhood in my hands again, and then tucking it away. Like saying goodbye all over again. In a sense, it was therapeutic, though I don’t think I liked it very much.
Finally, the room was empty, and now looked absolutely terrible. Mom agreed. “We need to go to the store and get some stuff to dress up this room. I can’t possibly put that poor policeman in here.”
“Can we do it tonight, Mom? Uncle Charlie is waiting for me.”
“Sure. We’ll go to IKEA and make it a fun mother-daughter night.”
My idea of a fun mother-daughter night wasn’t exactly IKEA, but since we needed to redo this room in a hurry, I agreed, before rushing off. I had a date with a dead body, and I didn’t want to be late. Well, actually I did, but I couldn’t leave Uncle Charlie hanging.
I arrived just in time. My uncle pointedly checked his watch as I came hurtling into the small cafeteria, dumped my bag on the table and said, “Sorry I’m late.”
“I was just about to start without you,” he said. “The family is flying in tomorrow, and I want the body to look spic and span.”
I grabbed a cup from the cupboard over the sink, rinsed it for good measure and filled it up with coffee from the pot. We walked the short distance to the preparation room, and the typical odor of formaldehyde and disinfectant greeted me, instantly turning the taste of coffee in my mouth into something odious.
Uncle Charlie examined her head wound carefully. “Mh. I can work with that,” he said. I helped him transfer the body to the preparation table and he set to work. Suddenly, I heard a sob behind me. Just what I’d feared.
“Oh,” Gemma said in a tremulous voice as she floated up.
“Maybe you don’t want to see this, Gemma,” I said.
My uncle looked up. “Is Gemma here?”
“Yes, she is.”
He grimaced. He couldn’t see ghosts, but knew that I could. He actually much preferred it this way. To handle the body of a deceased person while their ghost is looking on is not a nice way to work.
“I look terrible!” Gemma cried. “Look at my hair. And I’d just had a perm. And look at my skin. You can see all my pores.”
“Don’t worry. My uncle is a magician. He’ll make you look better than ever.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” my uncle muttered.
“Well, it’s true,” I said. “You always do a great job.”
“Look at those craters!” Gemma cried. She was studying herself up close and personal. “Why didn’t I ever take Susan up on her offer to go up to Boston and have a full facial at the Emma Grant Clinic? I could see the evidence firsthand on Susan that they did an amazing job. And did my nose really look like that?”
“Your nose is fine,” I assured her.
“It’s crooked! The left nostril is a lot bigger than the right! Oh. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me when I was alive? I could have had it fixed. Now it’s too late.”
Yes. Entirely too late. And kinda pointless.
“And look at my clothes. Don’t tell me these are the clothes they’re going to bury me in. They’re horrible!”
“Are these the clothes they’re going to bury her in?” I asked my uncle.
“Goodness, no,” my uncle said. “I’m meeting the family tomorrow and we’ll discuss all that in great detail.” He looked up in the direction he assumed Gemma was. “Does she have any preferences? Something I should push with the family?”