Bedpans, Teapots and Corpses (A Maggie and Irene Cozy Mystery Book 1)

by Kitty Margo

  I fell back in my chair ready to turn on the silent treatment. She can’t stand that.

  Next she tried sweet talking me. “Come on, Maggie. Let’s go with the group to eat supper and then go see your psychic after.”

  “It’s already 7:00,” I argued. “You know good and well she will be closed by the time we get back.”

  Even though the wheels were spinning furiously in her brain, she couldn’t come up with a suitable argument. “What about early in the morning?”

  “Won’t work,” I insisted. “We’re getting back on the road at 5:00am remember? It has to be tonight.” I don’t guess it’s anything to be proud of, but I have always been very persuasive. Irene calls it being manipulative and, granted; I can usually talk her into just about anything. As I was going out the door, I suddenly had a brainstorm. “Let’s call Lisa, the tour director, and have her to bring us back a carry out plate.”

  “Great idea,” Irene smirked, happy as a clam now that she wasn’t going to be eating supper from a cellophane wrapper. “Why didn’t you think of that in the first place?”

  “Just be thankful I thought of it at all.” I winked. “We wouldn’t want your sugar to drop.”

  She made a very unladylike gesture with her middle finger as we snatched up our purses and headed out the door to find Lisa.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maggie

  Psychic Lucinda was tall and skinny with long white hair braided and pinned on top of her head. She wore a long, flowing white garment that was belted around the waist and swirled around her feet when she walked. “Come in, ladies. Welcome to my home.”

  “Thank you,” Irene whispered, glancing around the room nervously.

  Lucinda motioned to a round table with a stack of tarot cards and candles of all colors lined up in neat rows. “Have a seat.” Then she looked directly at me. “You have lost a loved one.” Patting me on the shoulder, she smiled softly. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

  I thought that was pretty generic. Hasn’t everyone lost a loved one at some point? “Yes. My husband passed away a few years ago.”

  She nodded her head solemnly. “He has visited you a few times since his passing. Three times I believe.”

  “Yes, he has haunted me, I mean... visited me three times since he died.” How could she possibly know that?

  Shuffling her tarot cards, she reached over and lit a white candle. “He has some unfinished business with you.”

  Now we were getting somewhere. “Yes, that’s why I’m here. Can you please tell me what it is?”

  Before she could answer, the lights in the room began to flicker and make that staticky bssst bssst sound. Suddenly the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and a frigid blast of air that felt like it was blowing over a polar ice cap swirled around my legs and slowly moved up my body.

  Psychic Lucinda grabbed the edge of the table and glanced around the room warily like she knew what was coming. “It appears that we have been joined by a malevolent spirit.” She cast fleeting glances at both of us. “Let me warn you ahead of time that this will not be pleasant.”

  “A what?” Irene screeched. “What do you mean it won’t be pleasant? How unpleasant will it be?”

  I had an even better question, “Was that Earl?”

  “Oh, no, no,” Lucinda whispered, reaching across the table to pat my hand reassuringly. “Your husband died a peaceful death. The entity that is trying to come through now lost her life in a very violent manner.”

  “Entity?” Irene hollered. I swear to you, every ounce of blood had drained from her face. “You have got to be shitting me!”

  “Unfortunately, I’m not.” Lucinda looked at me and smiled. “Sometimes when a gentle spirit opens the door, such as your Earl, other entities are able to pass through the same portal as well.”

  “Could you ask her to move out of the way and let my Earl through?” This was my time!

  “I wish I could.” Lucinda shook her head sadly. “However, I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.”

  All of a sudden, the table started bouncing up and down on the floor and making a terrible racket. Tarot cards and candles danced across the table and fell onto the laminated wood floor. I was shaking like a leaf in a storm, but poor Irene was leaning back in her seat as far as she could get, trembling from head to toe, and moaning incoherently. She finally found her voice and screamed, “Somebody do something dammit!”

  Before any of us could react, a curio cabinet in the corner toppled to the floor landing a few inches from where we sat at the table. The noise of wood crashing and shattering glass was added to the sound of Irene’s keening. Then a sudden wind sprang up and Tarot cards whipped around us like we were in the center of a tornado. What in the hell was happening here!

  Irene jumped up and ran to the door. When she turned back around I knew from the look on her face that it was locked. I covered my ears for what was to come and sure enough she released several ear splitting wails that would have made a banshee proud. Bless her heart, when she looked at the floor and saw every single tarot card face down except the DEATH card, she leaned back against the door hyperventilating and squeezing her eyes shut, apparently trying to find her happy place.

  I sat there shivering since the temperature in the room was steadily dropping. A vein throbbed behind my eyes as I glanced over at Irene. She was also trembling violently, but I couldn’t be sure if it was from cold or fear. Probably a little of both. At any rate, the poor thing would have pneumonia if I didn’t cover her up, plus I felt guilty for forcing her to come in the first place.

  Even in all the chaos I noticed an afghan on a couch and started toward it, but my eyes were suddenly drawn toward the ceiling, in the corner. Something was floating there.

  Floating?

  As I got closer, I could make out that the something was a woman. A very bloody and very headless woman. Stumbling backward I almost broke my neck when I tripped over a lamp shade. Oh, my God! Surely this wasn’t the ghost from my back yard. Her skin was a sickly bluish mottled color. I shuddered when I noticed blood dripping from her neck and leaving a bright red trail across her naked breasts.

  As I approached, the apparition held up a hand to stop me. How could she see me without eyes? That’s when I noticed that her fingers were also dripping blood. Bright red drops that fell on the furniture below her. Oh, my God! The newspaper article had stated that the victims fingers had been cut off as well.

  Now, in my own defense, I tend to get stupid when I am scared out of my mind. So, in a daze, without thinking, I mumbled, “You are getting blood all over Psychic Lucinda’s sofa.”

  Why did I do that? Even without any facial expressions to go by I noticed her body tense and was quick to recognize that my careless words really did not sit well with this ghost. Understandably so. If I was dead I probably wouldn’t give a plug nickel about somebody’s sofa either. Before I could apologize for my thoughtless words, she pointed a finger - to be accurate it was more like half a finger - and the table began lifting into the air. Lucinda didn’t hesitate to scramble out of her chair and race across the room before the table could land on her. When Irene saw Lucinda running, she joined her.

  As they huddled around me it was obvious that neither of them could see the apparition hovering in the corner. Good. Irene was born with a weak constitution and seeing an actual spirit, headless at that, hovering in midair would surely see her committed to the nearest facility for the deranged.

  We all watched as the table crashed to the floor in a heap of splintered wood. When I glanced back the specter was gone, but the bright red spots of blood were still there.

  Lucinda gasped upon seeing the damage done to her once pristine white sofa. Then she held my shoulders and looked straight into my eyes. “Did you see it?”

  I slowly nodded my head. “Yes.”

  Irene shook her head, glanced around the room, and mumbled, “This has to be some of that Candid Camera nonsense.”

  Moving across th
e room we sat in the window seat, the only spot in the room that was still in one piece. Lucinda motioned toward the damage caused by the spirit, and said softly, “Tell me everything you saw.”

  “It was the ghost of the girl that was discovered in the woods behind my house,” I murmured. “I’m sure of it.”

  “Oh, my God,” Irene shrieked. “Why would she follow us here? This makes no sense.”

  “It makes perfect sense,” Lucinda corrected. “The ghost has unfinished business and she obviously needs Maggie’s help to finish it.”

  “Why me?” I wondered aloud.

  “Because for some reason only you can see her.”

  I left a few minutes later, still with no clue why a headless apparition had appeared before me, or why she had felt the need to destroy Psychic Lucinda’s parlor. I just wanted to forget everything that had happened here and enjoy my first cruise.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Maggie

  If I didn’t know better, I would swear the Sleepy Inn was haunted. What other reason could there be for all the strange things that happened during the night? For starters, something kept pulling the cover off me. I would wake up every little bit freezing because Irene had the air on 68 and my comforter was puddled on the floor at the foot of my bed. If that didn’t wake me, the white noise of the TV did.

  I know I had turned it off at least twenty times during the night. Then the black out curtains would somehow get pulled apart and the night light outside would light the room as bright as day, or the toilet would flush repeatedly, or the smell of coffee dripping would fill the room, or the bath tub would start filling, and on and on and on. And Irene slept through it all. Surely I couldn’t have dreamed all those shenanigans.

  The next morning, feeling like a zombie from a Walking Dead movie, we were on the bus before daylight and, for the record, I was none too pleased to be there. I could still hear the hotel bed gently calling my name. Maggie. Come back, Maggie. On the bright side, we were going to Cracker Barrel for breakfast and they would surely be grinding some coffee beans.

  “How did you sleep last night?” I asked begrudgingly, since Irene was looking entirely too jolly this morning.

  It had been agreed upon that we would all wear our Red Hat outfits onboard ship so that all the cruisers would know what club we represented. Of course Irene adamantly refused to wear either red or purple. She could be so contrary at times. “It was wonderful,” she chirped entirely too brightly. “The best sleep I’ve had in ages.”

  Figures. Perhaps it was only a dream. I wouldn’t mention it. I had learned long ago that it was better to let people think you were crazy rather than opening your mouth and proving it.

  I had leaned back in my seat to close my eyes for a few minutes, when suddenly the temperature on the bus dropped by a good twenty degrees or so. I kid you not. It was cold enough to hang meat. What I found odd was that the other passengers on the bus continued with their conversation, so evidently they didn’t feel the arctic blast. I snatched a blanket from my bag and covered up.

  The bus tilted slightly when the portly driver stepped onboard, but before he could close the door I was alarmed to see a thin black wispy bit of smoky fog slither up the steps and snake its way down the aisle. What now? A shiver raced down my spine when all at once the lights started flickering and making that buzzing staticky sound. Just like at Psychic Lucinda’s.

  As I watched, the black smoke changed to a rainbow of colors and began to gather and take form a few seats up from us. Within seconds the mist had taken the shape of a beautiful young woman, with her head still attached. She had waist length blonde hair and the palest porcelain skin I have ever seen. Something in my soul warned me that she was the bloody ghost from Psychic Lucinda’s, only this time she wasn’t bleeding and she had somehow transformed back into her own body. She really was stunningly beautiful with crystal blue eyes and she was mad as fire.

  “Why can you see me when no one else can?” She threw her hands up in the air, obviously exasperated. “Just my luck that only some old ass woman can see me when I die.”

  Old ass woman! Who was this cadaver calling old! “I will have you know 54 is not considered old at all these days.”

  “54? You have got to be kidding me. Although your face doesn’t have a wrinkle on it, you dress like an 80 year old woman.” She glanced down at my purple polyester pants with matching embroidered top, sensible red sandals, and red hat with purple feathers and snickered. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why can you see me when no one else can?”

  “I… don’t know?” I stammered. The woman in the seat across the aisle was looking at me strangely since I was carrying on a detailed conversation with air. Having something besides a brain fart for once, I jumped up and went into the bathroom away from inquiring minds.

  Once inside, I turned to find the phantom standing beside me. Bad idea. This was way too close for comfort.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” She had a short fuse and it was apparently growing shorter by the minute. “My own mother can’t even see or hear me, so how can you?”

  She wanted answers that I couldn’t give her. “I am as flabbergasted by all this as you are.” Why could I see her? “I have recently been visited by my dead husband and a classmate. Then yesterday I went to see a psychic and I guess you came through when she was trying to reach my deceased husband.”

  “Did you reach him?” she asked curiously, apparently eager for my answer.

  Why would she care? “No.”

  “That’s too bad,” she whispered.

  Now it was my time to get answers to a few of my questions. “Who are you?”

  “Natalie Buchanan.”

  Natalie Buchanan. The name didn’t ring a bell. “Where are you from?”

  “Pine View.”

  We lived in the same town? “Who are your parents?”

  “Nate and Alice Buchanan,” she whispered sadly.

  No! It couldn’t be. “Nate Buchanan that owns the feed mill store?

  “Yes, he’s my dad.”

  “Great day in the morning. I’ve been buying chicken feed from that man for over thirty years.”

  “Everybody loves my mom and dad,” my friendly neighborhood ghost whispered forlornly.

  “They sure do.” I reached out to touch her, but my hand met with ice cold air and I jerked it back. “What happened, honey? Who killed you?”

  She looked up at the ceiling for several seconds and then about stopped my heart when she completely freaked out, grabbing two handfuls of hair and shrieking, “I don’t know. I can’t remember and it’s driving me insane!”

  When she said this pink soap squirted out of the dispenser missing my eye by a millimeter, toilet paper jumped off the roll and wrapped around me from head to toe and the light bulb over the tiny sink exploded into a million pieces. It should have been pitch black, but I could squint through a crack in the toilet paper covering my eyes enough to see that she had a glow about her that lit the room with a dim light.

  “You know they are going to accuse me of breaking that light,” I said, spitting out toilet paper. What did I say that for? The temperature in the bathroom immediately dropped well below freezing and the water in the toilet froze on the spot.

  “That’s all you have to worry about!” she stormed. “A few drops of blood on a sofa and a broken light bulb? You have some nerve, lady! Try being dead!”

  I hung my head shamefully. “Sorry, that was really insensitive of me.”

  She clenched her fists at her sides, in an attempt to keep from choking me I suppose. “I want you to find out who killed me.”

  Me? “How can I do that?” I asked, peeling wet toilet paper away from my forehead.

  “I have no idea,” she insisted, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. “You just figure out a way to do it.”

  It was painfully obvious that the poor ghost put way too much confidence in my investigational skills. “Why don’t you just… cross
over to the other side or... whatever it is… spirits do.”

  “Because my mother is worried sick and I can’t leave her like this. It breaks my heart to see her suffering when there is no way I can help her.” As shocking as it sounds, ghosts can cry. I watched in silence as fat tears rolled down her cheeks. Then she raised her eyes to me and the fire was back in them. “She needs closure and you are the only one who can help her.” A veil of sadness draped over her beautiful face. “Her baby girl will never marry and give her grandchildren, and my mom really wanted grandchildren.” Then she became serious and looked me dead in the eyes. “If you don’t give her closure I will haunt you for the rest of your natural life.”

  What? “Why me?” I cried. “I never did anything to you.”

  “Duh.” She put her hand out and snapped her finger under my nose. “You are the only one who can see and hear me. Who else could possibly help me?”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my temples, trying to think of a way to break the unsettling news that I had zero detective skills in a way that wouldn’t set her off again. When I opened my eyes a few seconds later she was gone.

  Returning to my seat, I found Irene sound asleep. I should try to catch a nap too, but first I needed to distract my mind from all the weirdness that had suddenly infiltrated my life. Reading should help. I turned on my Kindle and immersed myself in Harper Lee’s new novel.

  ~*~

  I was totally engrossed in the book when the bus pulled into the parking lot at Cracker Barrel.

  As we followed the crowd and stepped up on the porch, I was lost in thought until Irene started poking me in the ribs and motioning with her head.

  “Stop it, Irene,” I gritted. “Why are you gouging your fingernail in my ribs?”

  Her answer was to point toward the porch.

  I looked up to find all the rocking chairs rocking without the aid of a human companion, yet there wasn’t the slightest breeze. Hearing someone gasp behind me, I saw several ladies nodding toward the tables where checkers were stacking themselves in neat order, red and black, red and black until they stood in a tower. Was Natalie doing this?