Hauntings of the Heart

by Joselyn Vaughn

  The Bower was a worthwhile investment. Gordon had been taught that by his father, and had eventually grown a tidy fortune by avoiding the mistakes his father had made. Like not siphoning money off the principle of the investment until there was nothing left. He wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than shuffling the money to a secret account, or squandering it on women or gambling. Any way you viewed it, it wasn’t right.

  Mark stopped. “Is that what this comes back to? How can you get what you want?” The hammer dropped to his side, but he flexed it, punctuating his words. “I don’t know what happened between you and Minnie or when it happened, but if you’re trying to get revenge on her for something, this is exactly how to do it.”

  13

  Minnie sat across from Dinah and Edith at the diner. She stirred her coffee as Edith loaded hers with enough sugar to make rock candy.

  “Minnie, you’ve got to straighten us out on all this. We’re hearing rumors left and right and we don’t know what to believe.” Dinah dropped her spoon on the table next to her cup. The clang rang inside Minnie’s head. The lack of sleep last night was catching up with her.

  “What have you heard?” Minnie sipped her coffee, anxious for the caffeine to clear her fogginess. She needed to work a nap into her schedule this afternoon. Exhaustion added a hysterical quality to this conversation. Usually, Edith and Dinah were behind the manipulated stories that traveled around town. This time, they were grasping for details.

  “The Bower has a poltergeist and it’s scaring the guests away.” Dinah picked up her spoon and waved it at Minnie.

  Minnie eyed Edith and gestured for her to keep her mouth shut. Edith grabbed her spoon and stirred her coffee vigorously, as if it required the concentration of brain surgery. “Since my current guests are paranormal investigators, they wouldn’t be frightened by the antics of a poltergeist.”

  Dinah continued as if Minnie hadn’t given a plausible explanation. “Al at the hardware store says Gordon intends to buy all of Main Street and convert the businesses to dollar stores. Maybelle says Gordon went into a rage and smashed his room at the Bower, and you had to call the police to get him settled down.” She ticked the list off on her fingers. She wagged her ring finger. “What was the other one?”

  Edith stared at her for a moment. She still swirled her spoon, and if the coffee hadn’t been so thick with sugar it would have sloshed over the sides. “Water?” she prompted.

  Dinah nodded. “That’s right. Gordon almost drowned in his bed when a pipe burst over his head.”

  Minnie snorted. After her conversation with him this morning, they shouldn’t be giving her ideas. “The water leak was over my bed,” Minnie corrected, figuring she’d start with the easiest to explain first. What could be misconstrued about worn out pipes?

  “Gordon was in your bed when he almost drowned?” Edith exclaimed, and Minnie felt the urge to slide under the table. Edith spoke so loud several diners jerked their heads toward their booth.

  Minnie wished she could produce a chili-soaked mouse to satisfy their curiosity. Instead, sliding under the table seemed like her only option. “Keep it down!” she hissed. She blocked her face from view with her hand. While she was perfectly fine knowing who spent their nights where around town, she didn’t care to have everyone speculating on where and with whom she might be spending hers.

  “So it is true!” Dinah gasped. “I didn’t think you two would pick up right where you left off.”

  “No, it’s not true!” Minnie gritted her teeth. “The water leak started in his shower and leaked through the walls. It broke through the light fixture above my bed. Neither Gordon nor I were in it at the time.”

  If Minnie had been capable of blushing at her age, her face surely would have flushed to fuchsia. Although she would concede to being warm, she didn’t believe she was actually blushing. If anything, the heat came from righteous indignation at Gordon and his presumptuous behavior. Like she would ever sell to him. She wouldn’t entrust a cockroach to his care, let alone all her dreams for the future.

  But what did Dinah know about where Minnie and Gordon’s relationship had been before she’d left? Minnie hadn’t told anyone but Edith about her last night with him. Had Gordon blabbed? It didn’t seem likely, but it would be one more reason for him to be on her crap list.

  Edith and Dinah shrank in their seats. “Darn. That was the best gossip I’ve heard in a long time,” Edith said.

  “Me too.” Dinah dumped a container of creamer into her mug.

  “The problem is the plumbing. The city could shut me down if they find out the sprinklers aren’t working.”

  “Really? Because they’re rusting?” Dinah asked.

  “Not the sprinklers themselves; the pipes leading to them are.”

  Dinah’s and Edith’s jaws dropped open.

  “Wasn’t that the reason for the fall of Rome? Made them all crazy.” Edith narrowed her eyes at Minnie and reached for her hand. “Are you feeling okay?”

  Dinah gasped. “The ghosts! They’re not real. She’s seeing things.” She turned to Edith and twirled her finger around her ear.

  “I’m not crazy,” Minnie bit off. “And that wasn’t rust that did in the Romans; it was lead. But Mark says I have to replace every pipe in order to turn the sprinklers back on, and I don’t have the cash. I can’t have the city shut me down. The ghost hunters want to bring their whole team soon. I need to have everything up and running.”

  “The couple with the Geiger counters?” Dinah unfolded her napkin and dropped it in her lap.

  “Geiger counters are for radiation, like at Chernobyl,” said Edith.

  “Isn’t that what they are trying to find? Ghostly radiation?”

  “Did they find something? What did they see in the hallway?” Edith asked.

  “I didn’t know the Bower was haunted.” Dinah emptied her mug in a gulp and placed it on a napkin on the side of the table. “I mean, there were rumors about Gordon’s father, but…”

  Minnie sighed. Edith should know exactly what they saw; she’d likely caused it. But Dinah wasn’t in on the scheme. If Minnie couldn’t come clean with her friends, who would she have to help her sort out this mess? Her friends were great for figuring out sticky situations, but she had to admit, they were pretty good at creating them, too.

  She leaned across the table, sliding her coffee mug to the side so she didn’t knock it over. “The Bower isn’t haunted. At least I don’t think it is,” she said in a hushed voice. She’d never heard anything about Gordon’s father, but the Andersons had moved well over a year before she’d returned from the Peace Corps. The gossip must have died down by then. “I advertised that it was, to draw more business during a slow month.”

  “Then why are the ghost hunters inviting the rest of their team?” Dinah asked in a voice slightly louder than a stage whisper.

  “All their equipment turned itself on in the middle of the night, and they think there’s something on the videos.” She glanced at Edith, who shook her head slightly.

  Dinah leaned across the table. “Doors slamming? Long dead Confederate soldiers wandering the halls?”

  “Confederate soldiers? Why would there be Confederate ghosts in Michigan?” Edith wiped her fingers on her napkin.

  “Confederates sound so much more romantic than Union ones.”

  “Well I didn’t see any soldiers, Confederate or otherwise, on the video,” Minnie said. “Just some flashes and a weird shadow.”

  Dinah made a funny face. Edith focused on her French fries.

  “Maybe the Bower was built over an old Indian cemetery,” Rachel suggested as she approached their table with a steaming carafe of coffee. “Refills, anyone?”

  Edith and Dinah raised their mugs to the waitress. Minnie started to lift hers as well, then realized she hadn’t drunk any yet. No wonder she was having a hard time keeping up with Edith and Dinah.

  Rachel deftly poured the coffee. “I always thought it would be fun to stay in a haun
ted house.” She winked at Minnie. “Maybe I’ll have to make a reservation.” She circled to another table with the coffeepot.

  “That’s what I was hoping for—a few people who wanted the thrill of sleeping in a haunted house. Not actual paranormal investigators with ghost detecting equipment and video recorders.” Minnie decided she’d better drink her coffee before it got cold. She needed the caffeine to keep on her toes. “Now they’re going to expose the place as a fraud, and I’ll never get enough business to upgrade the pipes, and I’ll have to close.”

  Dinah swished her coffee. “You need an investor.”

  “A fabulous idea.” Edith nodded. “There’s got to be someone around here with money to throw around.”

  “Doesn’t Gordon have money? He is trying to buy all of Main Street.” Dinah waved her hand toward the window and the shops across the street.

  Edith reached for the sugar container. “I’d bet he’d be willing to front you some cash, being as the place is his childhood home.”

  “He offered,” Minnie said reluctantly. “He doesn’t want to pay for repairs. He wants to buy the whole property.”

  Dinah’s and Edith’s mouths both formed perfect O’s.

  “I told him and his lawyer to go jump in the lake.”

  Dinah snorted. “I wouldn’t have put it so politely.”

  “But what are you going to do instead?” Edith folded her napkin. “You could get him to write a check for the plumbing repairs, then use the ghosts to scare him away.”

  “But there aren’t really ghosts,” Minnie reminded them. “If I can’t come up with something else, I’ll have to accept his offer.”

  Edith thunked her cup against her napkin. “I’m sure the three of us can come up with a plan.”

  * * *

  Gordon stepped through the automatic doors of the library. They whooshed closed behind him. More renovations. He’d thought the familiarity of the building would help him sort out his tangled mess, but the saltbox building his mother had spearheaded hadn’t survived into the twenty-first century. He marveled at how the old had transformed into the new, and how the community had expanded it.

  His mother had treasured books, and had done everything in her power to ensure others did, too. She had been the hurricane force behind the fundraising for the library, so that books and everything they contained would be accessible to everyone. She’d wanted something better for all the children of Carterville, not just her own.

  Gordon’s eyes stung, and he brushed away the dust that must be bothering them. Being around stacks of books always made his eyes water. He wouldn’t admit libraries made him cry. Combine that with the warning from Mark, and he wondered if he might be going off his rocker.

  How could he reconcile all the things he should do for others with the things he wanted to do for himself? Story of his life. Usually, what he wanted fell by the wayside in order to support those who needed him. He no longer thought buying the Bower was an option. The idea of moving back to the Bower had appeased his mother’s anxiety, but he couldn’t drive Minnie out of her home. The Bower had already lost owners who loved it.

  What else could he do to provide comfort for his mother’s final days?

  He must have appeared lost, because a staff person came around the circulation desk. “May I help you find something?” The young man wore jeans, a white button-down shirt, and a tie. Gordon didn’t recognize him.

  “The library’s changed a lot since I was here last.”

  “That must have been before the renovations and additions.” The young man nodded in understanding. “Would you like a tour?” He gestured to the rest of the library.

  Gordon hadn’t looked that far ahead. He almost stumbled backward when his gaze followed where the man indicated. The building had grown four to five times the size he remembered.

  He knew his mother would have loved participating in the renovations. She’d have been involved, he had no doubt. Wrangling donations from the community through benefit concerts, bake sales, and penny collections. Prying open even the tightest wallets had always been his mother’s specialty.

  “I’d like that,” Gordon said, still trying to take in the building’s expansion.

  The man led him to an archway Gordon recognized as the entrance to the original library. The shelves that had once crammed into the space had been removed in favor of overstuffed chairs, where patrons lounged reading newspapers and magazines. The information desk stood centered between two banks of computers, all filled with people. Gateways to the other additions to the library had been carved out of its former exterior walls. Each gateway led to a different section: adults’, teens’, and children’s.

  “Which section would you like to see first?” the young man asked.

  Gordon’s eyes locked on the drawbridge leading to the children’s section. His mother had given the dedication to the library in the old children’s section, describing the library as a “palace of information.” It had been the last time he’d seen her glow. He jerked his gaze to the opposite side of the building. “Umm, perhaps the adult section. Thanks for showing me around. I didn’t get your name.”

  “Daniel.” He held out his hand and Gordon shook it. “Obviously, this is our adult section. We have fiction on the right and nonfiction on the left.” He approached a computer. “We received a one-time grant to test out a new ebook system. Patrons can bring in their readers and download any book in the digital collection. When the checkout time is up, they can either renew it, or the book automatically deletes itself from the device.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like it,” Gordon said. So much had changed since his mother’s vision had created this building. Despite what she felt, she wouldn’t know how to help Carterville anymore. She’d never caught on with computers. She could never understand what the town’s needs were now.

  “It’s been extremely popular. Even greater than we imagined.” Daniel stared at the computer as if in awe of its power. “Our circulation has doubled since we got the grant. Even the print books are being requested faster than we can check them in.”

  “That’s unbelievable. What a great benefit to the community.”

  “It is. It really is. I hope it doesn’t sour people’s attitudes when the grant runs out. We haven’t found the funds to continue it yet.”

  “Is it very expensive?” Gordon had the money. He could continue the program. He’d gladly write a check to provide something so beloved by the community.

  “We have a fairly limited collection, so it’s only a few thousand dollars. The bestseller plan is much more expensive. With our multiple funding cuts, it’s becoming difficult to maintain our current hours, let alone continue this program, despite its popularity.”

  “It would be a shame to lose something the community values so highly.” He couldn’t let something his mother started die, especially when it had been received so favorably. What could he do to save the whole library? There had to be some way he could help.

  His mother would have dreamt up a solution with a snap of her fingers, and she’d have had the plan in motion within the hour. Gordon, however, was an executor, not an idea person. All those personality tests they’d thrown at him in business school had confirmed it. He excelled at putting a plan into action, but faltered at coming up with the idea in the first place. Minnie had always been his idea person.

  “Our director agrees, but hasn’t discovered a solution.” Daniel sighed. “The Friends of the Library are supporting us as much as they can, but even they can’t raise this kind of money.” Daniel moved back through the archway. “Which section would you like to see next?”

  Gordon indicated the teen archway, and they walked toward it while Daniel explained the various features of the department. Gordon heard little of what he said. His mind had focused on the funding problems. Even with his bank account, he couldn’t establish a stable funding source for the library. He could bandage the bleeding bottom line for a few years, but that would only
create an increasingly dire situation in the future.

  As Daniel headed toward the children’s section, Gordon thanked him for his time. He couldn’t face this section of the library with the youngster chattering at his side. Gordon followed a colorful path of carpet squares to the children’s room. The path widened at the entry arch and the carpet became the drawbridge of a castle. Princesses, knights, horses, and banners decorated the walls and bookshelves. His grandchildren would have loved it here. Too bad they were all in college now. The room tumbled with imagination, exactly as his mother had dreamed: a palace of ideas.

  Unfortunately, her fire and determination had died with his father’s deception about their financial situation. His father had committed suicide, the family had lost their home, and they’d fled the only community they’d ever known with little more than a few dollars to their names. His mother might as well have died; she’d lost the love of her life, and her own spark. She’d become an empty shell, sitting each day by the window, staring at the curtains but never seeing beyond the glass.

  He couldn’t help but think Minnie would have known what to do. She would have helped him find nursing care for his mother and take care of his sisters. She had the imagination to devise a solution “outside the box,” as they described it nowadays. He wished he hadn’t screwed up the trust budding between them. If he could talk to Minnie now, they could find a way through all this. Minnie would know how to soothe his mother’s anxiety about Carterville.

  Despite what his mother wanted, she wasn’t strong enough to do all she envisioned. Her health wouldn’t permit her to be the patroness of Carterville anymore. He could still take her to visit the Bower, though. Maybe Minnie would allow her to stay for an extended visit. Hopefully, the familiar surroundings would ease her last days and halt the anxiety that had been building since Ann had died.

  Well, Minnie might have allowed it if he hadn’t blurted out his intention to purchase the Bower. He was usually so good at finessing business deals, but Minnie had him mis-stepping at every turn. He’d have to do some fancy footwork to smooth things over. It’d be a long, hard slog, but he wasn’t surrendering this time.