HOLY SMOKE (An Andi Comstock Supernatural Mystery, Book 1)

by Ann Simas

  Judging from his worried expression, he did.

  Andi rushed to reassure him. “It’s a privilege to be employed here. I’m humbled that you feel the work I do is commensurate with such a generous salary. Thank you, Brent. Thank you so much!” She had to restrain herself from jumping out of her chair and doing the happy dance around his office. Instead, she sat calmly and tried to comport herself like the lady her mother had taught her to be. Even though it would be too unprofessional to give Brent a fist bump, she did shoot him a grin.

  “One more thing. You’ll be getting a bonus when Bunny Hop is completed. At your current rate of progress, I’d say that will be just around your anniversary date.”

  “Wow. Thank you!” She’d heard chatter about bonuses from other software developers she knew, but she’d never expected to be a recipient.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “Let’s get this contract signed and back to personnel.” After the formalities were done, he said, “Welcome to our house, Andi. Orion’s Belt is honored to have you here. We were anticipating a possible three-year software release life cycle on Bunny Hop, but you’ve given us hope that not only can we cut that time in half, but that we’ll be able to keep building the app to extend play.”

  “I’m looking forward to running out of rabbit names as I progress through the chapters.”

  Brent laughed.

  Andi already had a number of jobs on her resume, starting in high school when she’d taught herself HTML while working summers at a web design firm. That skill had allowed her to pay her way through college. After she got her degree, she bounced around from temp job to temp job, hoping the economy would pick up so she could find permanent employment. Every company in the state of Oregon that wrote game apps had received her resume, but Orion’s Belt was where she’d landed. She’d never felt as welcome or as appreciated on any job as she did here, and staying in Edgerton meant remaining close to family. “Thanks again, Brent. I can’t tell you how much this means to me.”

  He smiled, patted her on the shoulder, and sent her on her way with a brand new nameplate.

  Outside her office, Andi removed the flimsy piece of paper with her name printed on it from the nameplate holder and slid in the one Brent had given her. She stood back and admired the shiny black background with her name and title emboldened in a gold font.

  ANDREA COMSTOCK

  Senior Software Developer

  Wow! Just wow!

  She wanted to tell someone about her good fortune. A promotion and a salary increase all in the same day! Plus a promised bonus. Life just didn’t get any better.

  She texted her mom, inviting her parents out to dinner. This was cause for celebration, if ever there was one, and she’d take them somewhere special for all their years of support and encouragement. She also texted her sister and would have invited her brother, but he was out of town for a training seminar.

  On her lunch hour, she called the rental company that handled the apartment she’d fallen in love with a while back. “Is it still available?” Andi asked the complex manager, whose name was Margie.

  “Oh, Andi, I’m sorry, it’s not! But…wait a minute.”

  Andi heard Margie clicking on her keyboard. A few minutes later, she had the good and the bad news. The apartment was no longer available, but a corner unit, at the same monthly rent, was. It had a fireplace and a larger balcony and had been completely refurbed, including wood floors. “I’ll take it,” Andi said, sight unseen. She made arrangements to stop by Margie’s office after work to sign the lease and put down her rent money. Her studio lease was up in a week. The overlap would make the move manageable.

  Things were looking good. Better than good. Life lately was like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates: you might not know what the next one would be like, but overall, chocolate was chocolate. Who could complain?

  Even as she had the thought, the scent of smoke wafted around her. Andi heard, The apartment is made for you, Andi. Your dad and brother will help you move and your mom and sister will help you decorate. Family is so important, isn’t it?

  Stunned, Andi felt tears well up in her eyes. Another child, though perhaps not a young one. She pulled her purse out of the bottom drawer and withdrew the journal from it. With care, she noted the day, date, and time and made her entry.

  She then went to the restroom and patted her face with a dampened paper towel. She stared at her reflection in the mirror, wondering why it just occurred to her that most of the Smokies spoke in the past tense. What did that mean? Were they ghosts? Was the building haunted? If it was, had it been something before, like a care home or a clinic or some kind of hospital or hospice? Or maybe the building had been built on a old cemetery.

  The ramifications of her light-bulb moment staggered Andi as visions of Poltergeist revenge swamped her. She put her hands against the porcelain sink for support.

  The Smokies nearly always lamented the loss of something, even as they offered her encouragement or well wishes or even advice.

  Andi closed her eyes. “Dear God, please help me figure this out. Do the Smokies want my help in some way? Is there something I should be doing for them? Please, Lord, help me find my way on this.”

  No thunder boomed, no lightning flashed, no fishes fell from the sky. Andi blinked at her reflection, then said solemnly to her mirrored-ego, “God works in mysterious ways.”

  The scent of smoke had vanished. No Smokie voice had any pearls of wisdom to add to those Andi had uttered. She straightened her shoulders and exited the restroom.

  Back to work. Lunch in ninety minutes. She’d splurge on an ice cream sundae and add nuts. That way she’d get in two of the four food groups, dairy and protein. Then back to Bunny Hop for another four hours. Flopsy and Mopsy were waiting for Peter Cottontail. After that, she’d go see her new apartment and sign the lease.

  By no means would she sit around wondering if God planned to answer her prayer today or next week or maybe never.

  . . .

  Just after noon, Andi stepped outside and inhaled deeply. The scent of smoke hovered in the air, heavier than before.

  Andi clenched her fists so tightly she could feel her short nails biting into her skin. She had to talk to someone about this, but who? Not anyone at work, and if she told her parents, they’d constantly worry about her mental state. Hadn’t her father asked her numerous times over the years if being zapped by too many EMFs from her computer was harmful? Her brother and sister would probably advise her to buy a Ouija board or something equally idiotic, because really, did they ever take anything she told them seriously?

  You should talk to Father Riley at St. Gemma’s, Andi. He is a man of God and a believer in the afterlife. He will not laugh at you, nor will he disparage you.

  Andi almost fell over. She couldn’t have been more shocked if God Himself had counseled her. “But I haven’t been to church in years!” she blathered.

  Belief in God does not require attendance in a house of worship, Andi. Father Riley is a fair and open thinker. Talk to him.

  Andi opened her mouth to respond and found herself speechless.

  Had she really been talking to the voice in her head?

  And what was this mumbo-jumbo about the afterlife?

  CHAPTER 3

  With a sense of pride and satisfaction, Andi picked up the empty carton, relieved to finally have the last of her moving boxes unpacked. With help from her family, the actual move had gone smoothly. After just a week, her apartment was more than she had ever imagined it could be.

  The hustle and bustle of packing, loading and unloading the truck, and unpacking had not been enough to take her mind off the Smokies, though. Or what possible connection they had with the afterlife. Still vacillating over whether or not to make an appointment with a neurologist to have her brain checked out, she knew she’d have to come to a decision sooner rather than later. Either that, or prepare to live with her loony self for however long she had left.

  Andi broke down the box a
nd propped it next to the front door, so she’d remember to take it to the recycle bin. She set a pot of water to boil for pasta, then stopped for a moment to admire her prized acquisition, an antique oak draw-leaf table (and six chairs), purchased at an antique store her sister Natalie had introduced her to. She now had plenty of room to invite her parents, her sister, and her brother Dell for dinner—and an oven big enough to hold a roasting pan for a twenty-pound turkey. Thanksgiving, here I come!

  Andi leaned over, inhaling the heady fragrance of the peonies her mother had dropped off earlier in a beautiful glass vase. Someday, like her mother, she planned to have half a dozen peony plants in her own yard, in shades from deep rose to pure white. And lilacs, too. Home ownership was Andi’s next major life goal.

  After a late lunch on the balcony, at a bistro table she’d scored from Pier 1’s end-of-summer sale, she reclined on the chaise lounge with a book. To the accompaniment of singsong birds and the lawn sprinklers snick, snicking as they watered the adjacent lush greenbelt, Andi tried to keep her eyes open, but the warm summer afternoon and lack of sleep over the past week conspired against her. She dozed off and her book slipped to the balcony floor with a quiet thunk.

  Within minutes, she drifted into a dream state where she found herself in a smoky haze, surrounded by unseen entities, each speaking to her, each urging her to do something, do something, do something.…

  Then came a replay of the voice she’d heard the day before. The one that nearly caused her to run screaming from the Orion’s Belt building. The one that said, This is not the way it’s supposed to happen, Andi….

  Still asleep, Andi jerked restlessly on the chaise. Within the Smokie’s words, she discerned frustration, anger, and regret. She had to figure out something…talk to someone….

  Andi jolted awake.

  Good grief! Could it really be that simple? Why had she avoided it?

  She picked up her book and set it on the chaise, then went inside for her laptop. It was too nice a day to be inside, so she set it up at the bistro table and pressed the ON switch. In seconds, she plugged St. Gemma’s Edgerton Oregon into the search engine, a little surprised when it came up as the first link.

  She perused the information under each tab, making note of mass times, then went back to read about the parish priest. Father Riley O’Shaughnessy had been pastor at St. Gemma’s for almost three decades. His startling black eyebrows told her the color his silver hair must have been at one time and his dark eyes looked…well, the only word Andi could come up with was mischievous. Irreverent as it seemed, she sensed it was accurate.

  From what the Smokie had said when suggesting Andi talk to Father Riley, Andi had assumed he would be ancient and fatherly. Or maybe he’d have light-socket hair a la Christopher Lloyd’s character in Back to the Future and the woo-woo aura of a New Age hipster who had sought the priesthood so he could exorcise ghosts and help them move on to the afterlife.

  According to Father O’Shaughnessy’s bio, his degree in Philosophy came from Portland State University. Afterward, he’d attended seminary at Mount Angel Abbey for four years. Ordained shortly after, he had been at St. Gemma’s ever since. Andi did some quick math and calculated his age to mid-fifties. He was the fourth of five children born to an Irish couple who had fled the strife of Belfast just weeks after their wedding by immigrating to the U.S.

  He didn’t look scary, but once she told him how and why she’d sought him out, would he label her a heretic and warn her never to darken St. Gemma’s doors again?

  Andi sucked in a deep, shaky breath of air. Was all this real? She pinched herself and felt it. “Definitely real,” she commented to a finch nibbling at the small birdfeeder attached to the balcony rail. It twittered a scolding at her and flew away. All of it was real, even the voices. The Smokies didn’t follow her home, but they might as well, since she thought about them constantly.

  She’d had moments over the past three months when she questioned being able to listen to the voices day in and day out without losing her mind. Now that she engaged in an occasional short conversation with some of them, she wondered if she hadn’t already gone crazy. Was everything she heard a figment of her vivid, if deranged imagination?

  All that questioning and the answers always remained the same. Yes, she could listen to the voices five days a week and remain sane. Yes, it was okay to converse with them. And yes, they were real. They hadn’t frightened her, and they didn’t show any indication of being evil, so really, what did she have to worry about?

  Hadn’t her grandmother always said it was okay to talk to yourself as long as you didn’t respond? Remembering that, Andi’s doubts surfaced again. If the voices actually were a product of her own fertile mind, and she now conversed with them, didn’t that mean she was already answering herself?

  Andi closed out the browser and shut down the laptop. Her reticence to seek out Father O’Shaughnessy had more to do with her self-doubts than the fact that he might think her a nut case. St. Gemma’s was located just a block away from her office. She could have walked over any time on her lunch hour, but the fact was, she hadn’t been ready to discuss the voices with anyone. They were her secret, her dilemma, her cross to bear, so to speak.

  Now, just like that, she was ready. Finally, she could discuss with Father O’Shaughnessy the who, the why, and the how attached to the words the Smokies uttered to her alone.

  Maybe.

  Her plan formulated, Andi shoved aside her doubts and picked up her abandoned book. She settled herself on the chaise once again and began to read.

  . . .

  Andi arrived at St. Gemma’s at 7:15 a.m. She entered through the double doors, crossed through the narthex and into the nave, hesitating momentarily at the font before she dipped her fingers into the holy water and crossed herself.

  You can take the girl out of the Catholic church, but you can’t take the Catholic church out of the girl.

  Andi said her prayers and her rosary occasionally, but she’d have to skip Eucharist, since she hadn’t been to confession for almost ten years. She spent the minutes before mass watching morning sunlight play through the beautiful stained glass windows set into the south wall, casting myriad colors across the pews. Since girlhood she had loved religious pictures, which always seemed intense in both hue and subject matter.

  Not many people came to the service, but it was still more than Andi had expected, considering the early hour. Most were middle- to late-aged people, with no children in attendance at all. Afterward, the priest, whom she recognized from his photo on St. Gemma’s website, stood at the double doors, greeting each parishioner who passed. Andi tried to remain unobtrusive in the back pew. Twice, Father O’Shaughnessy glanced her way, but never hurried those along who lingered to exchange more than a morning greeting.

  Finally, it was Andi’s turn. She approached him as the last of three blue-haired ladies made their way down the front steps.

  “Good morning,” she said to the priest.

  “Good morning. You’re new here, aren’t you? I’m Father Riley O’Shaughnessy.” He offered his hand in greeting.

  “I’m Andrea Comstock. Andi.”

  “Welcome to St. Gemma’s.”

  “Thank you. It was a lovely service.”

  “You should come to the eleven o’clock and catch my sermon,” he advised, as if imparting a secret. “That will really rock you.”

  Andi deduced from his tone that he had spoken facetiously. She hadn’t been wrong about that mischievous gleam in his eyes. “Maybe next week, I will.”

  “Are you new in town?”

  “No, but I haven’t been to church in awhile. My family attends St. Mike’s. I mean St. Michael’s.”

  “St. Gemma’s is abbreviated, too,” the priest said. “St. Gemma Galgani is too much of a mouthful.” One of his dark eyebrows shot up. “What’s on your mind, Andi?”

  Even though the decision to seek him out had finally been made, and in the course of things, had lightened
her mental load, if not her soul, she remained a bit uncomfortable about why she was there, and more than a little uneasy about how to say what she had to say. “Um, someone told me that you’re a good listener….”

  “I hope so. At least, I’ve had a lot of practice over the past thirty years.”

  She looked down at her shoes, over his shoulder, up at the sky. Anything to keep from speaking.

  “Andi?” He hesitated a moment. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”

  “Don’t be so sure,” Andi shot back.

  He blinked at her in obvious surprise and offered a smile she assumed was meant to reassure. “I’ve heard just about everything, Andi.”

  “I hope that’s true, Father O’Shaughnessy,” she said, her tone serious. “Is it possible to make an appointment to speak with you? Outside the confessional?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I’m free this afternoon. Would you be able to come to the rectory, say around two?”

  That soon? Andi panicked for an instant, then realized she’d put this discussion off far too long as it was. She just needed to get it over with. “Yes. If I recall correctly, the rectory is located behind the church.”

  He nodded. “There’s small sign out front identifying it. And please, call me Father Riley. Everyone does.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you later, then. Thank you.” Andi could feel Father O’Shaughnessy’s eyes boring into her as she hot-footed it down the steps and turned toward the Orion’s Belt parking lot, where she’d parked her car. Twice she almost turned back and told him to forget it, she didn’t need to talk to him, after all, but common sense prevailed and finally she was in her vehicle and headed home, where she agonized over the meeting for the next five-plus hours.

  . . .

  Polite greetings were exchanged. The priest settled Andi into a worn but comfortable leather chair in front of his desk with a cup of coffee and got right down to business. “You’ve piqued my interest, Andi. May I ask who told you to come talk to me?”