by Lucy Ness
I thought about steely-eyed Tab Sadler. “You mean—”
Agnes nodded. “I gave up the presidency so Muriel could have her moment in the spotlight, and I don’t regret it for one minute. She deserved some happiness. Her husband . . .” A shiver skittered over Agnes’s shoulders. “Tab Sadler is a monster. In fact . . .” She looked around just to be sure we were still alone. “We asked you to look into the murder, remember. Well, think about this, Avery. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Tab was the one who killed Muriel.”
CHAPTER 9
What did I know about investigating a murder?
In a word, absolutely nothing.
Okay, that’s two words, but they are two words that pretty much say it all. The PPWC board had asked me to look into what happened to Muriel. And I had. Sort of. I’d talked to Tab Sadler and asked him where he was the night Muriel was killed. I’d spent hours thinking about Patricia and her bruises and her lies. I’d considered Agnes wanting the presidency, giving up the presidency, getting the presidency after all.
But really, what had I found out?
In a word—okay, two—absolutely nothing.
The thought weighed on my mind, even while I helped Quentin and Geneva get ready for the next day’s lunch and what we expected would be a full house and a whole lot of pasta served. It knocked at my brain as I lent a hand when the presidential inauguration committee cleaned up the ballroom.
The thought of how I’d promised to look into the murder—and more importantly, the realization that I didn’t know what I was doing—wouldn’t leave me alone, not even when Jack came down the stairs, ready to leave for the day, and gave me a rundown on where he was in the restoration process.
“I’ve ordered more plastic runners to put down on the carpeting in Marigold.” He showed me the invoice from the online site where he’d placed the order. “Those should be arriving first thing tomorrow. From what I’ve been able to see so far, most of the books can be saved. There’s smoke damage, of course. I’ve got one air ionizer running in Marigold and another one running in the hallway between Marigold and Lilac. That should help get rid of the smoky smell.” He took a deep breath. “You can barely detect it down here and . . .” He bent and leaned closer, the better to peer into my face. “You’re not even listening, are you?”
“Is it that obvious?” I’d been standing by the front door, ready to lock it behind Jack as soon as he left, and I dragged around to the far side of my desk and dropped into the chair there. My head hurt. My spirits were down in the dumps. I’d barely slept since the night Muriel died, and the exhaustion was taking its toll. “It’s the murder,” I told him.
Jack set down the briefcase he carried in one hand and the piles of papers he had in the other and came to stand in front of me. He ran a hand through his hair and I can’t say if that was meant to make it look any tidier, I only know that when he did, it stuck up on one side. “It’s only natural,” he said. “Everyone is upset.”
“Yeah, but not everyone is in charge. I am, and I’ve got to make sure Muriel’s death doesn’t hurt the club.”
“From what I saw today, that’s not going to happen. The place was hopping.”
“It was,” I admitted. “But for all the wrong reasons.”
“You mean—” When Jack made a face, his dark-rimmed glasses climbed up the bridge of his nose. “People were here just because . . . They wanted to be at the club because . . . They were rubbernecking?”
I’m not exactly sure it qualifies as rubbernecking when it comes to murder, but I knew what he was getting at, just as I understood the way his face paled. Jack was as baffled as I was by human nature and the fact that Muriel’s death had caused a spike in club attendance. We were on the same page, me and Jack. I actually smiled.
“That’s better.” Jack smiled back, and some of the tension that had been coiled inside me slackened off, eased by the warmth of his expression. “Hey, look, it’s not that late and . . .” He cleared his throat. “I know you’re new in town and . . .” He lifted his chin and threw back his shoulders. Yeah, like a guy facing a firing squad.
“You want to have dinner?” he asked. “I mean, with . . . uh . . . me?”
A little more of that stress that had me tied in knots backed off.
At least until I came to my senses.
I stared at Jack.
He looked back at me, bewildered.
One second ticked by. Two. Three.
Finally, I took pity on him. “Dinner? Tonight?”
“Well, we could do it tomorrow, but you look so tired, I can’t imagine you’re going to cook for yourself. That’s why I thought tonight would be better. We’ll go somewhere where people can wait on you and you can order comfort food.”
I gave him another chance. “Tonight?”
One corner of his mouth screwed up. “Not a good idea?”
“Not when you’re having dinner with Kendall.”
“Oh my gosh! Kendall!” He groaned. “I forgot all about Kendall.” He pulled out his phone and checked the time, then scooped up his papers and briefcase. “I’m sorry, Avery. Rain check?”
Jack wasn’t at all my kind of guy. That had always been—much to Aunt Rosemary’s dismay—the pickup driving, blue-collar, country music type. But Jack was definitely cute, even if he was a little squirrelly and, let’s face it, when a woman is feeling sorry for herself, cute has its charms.
“Sure,” I told him.
Was it the same thing I’d told Oz when he talked about sharing a bottle of wine?
Maybe dark, policey, and not-so-tall has its charms, too.
Or maybe I was just so dazed by everything that had happened since I walked into PPWC, I wasn’t thinking straight about either man.
Once he was out at his car, Jack waved and raised his voice so I could hear him where I stood just outside the front door. “Oh, and if you could tell the ladies not to touch anything in Marigold or in Lilac, that would be terrific.”
“No worries,” I assured him. But of course, I had plenty of worries.
I went back inside, locked the front door, checked the security program on my computer to make sure all the other doors in the building were secured, and considered my options.
I could go upstairs and fall into bed, where I wouldn’t sleep a wink because I was too antsy.
I could go upstairs and make myself some dinner, which I then would proceed not to eat because just thinking about the effort of popping something in the microwave made me too exhausted to chew.
Or I could get down to business.
Automatically, my gaze shifted over to the doorway that led into the basement. There was still yellow crime scene tape draped over it in a crazy crisscross pattern, but Oz would understand, right? The PPWC was my home, so of course if anyone was allowed access to all its rooms, it was me. And besides, I wasn’t going to touch anything. I was only going to think. Only going to see if going down into the basement shook loose any memories of the night of the murder, if it would help me figure out what happened to Muriel and thus fulfill my promise to the board.
Yeah, my hands shook when I went to reach for the doorjamb so I could brace myself as I squeezed through the strips of tape. That was right before I reminded myself not to be too dramatic. Or too stupid.
I pulled the sleeves of my shirt down around my hands so I wouldn’t leave any fingerprints on the doorjamb, and did what I’d seen Tab Sadler try to do in Muriel’s office. I limboed my way through and around the strips of tape, got myself safely to the top step, then started down the stairs.
This time I had a distinct advantage: the lights worked.
Well, maybe that wasn’t such a blessing after all, not when I saw the deep red stain on the step where I’d found Muriel crumpled and dead.
I hopped over that step, got to the bottom of the stairs, and turned around to look things o
ver.
“Crazy thing, huh? I mean finding somebody who’s been bumped off like that.”
My breath caught, my heart stopped. I spun around.
And there she was, the girl in the beaded dress.
“How did you get in here?” I demanded.
She lifted one slim shoulder. “Same as always, sister.”
“But I just checked the security system.” I pointed back toward the steps and up to about where my desk was on the floor above us. “All the doors are locked. All the windows are alarmed. Everything’s as secure as secure can be and still . . .” When my heart started up again, it was with a thump that jolted me forward. My stomach froze into a block of ice. My blood whooshed in my ears.
Yeah, I suspected, but this was the first moment I actually knew.
I swallowed down the sand in my throat. “You’re a ghost.”
The girl grinned. “Want me to prove it?”
Just like that, she disappeared, then popped up again a second later, right next to me.
I didn’t so much gasp as I did groan.
“What?” She screwed up one side of her mouth. “You ain’t gonna scream? Or faint? You ain’t gonna cry?”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Well . . .” Her shoulders rose and fell. “I always thought it would be more of the goat’s whiskers, you know? A really big deal. Vanishing right in front of somebody.” She did exactly that. There one second, gone the next. Then back to standing across from the stairs, where she’d been to begin with. “Maybe I just need to be a little more dramatic.”
She levitated three feet off the ground and flapped around in a circle and those big bows on her shoes fluttered like bird wings.
As soft as a whisper, she landed, then looked at me hard. “Still nothing? No shrieks? No shudders? No shouts?”
Only deep down, soul-crushing disappointment.
“I don’t want to communicate with the Other Side,” I groaned.
Her eyes opened wide. “Most people . . . I mean, most living people . . . they don’t even believe in the Other Side.”
I sighed. “It’s my aunt Rosemary’s fault,” I told the girl. “She lives in a place called Lily Dale, New York, and—”
“Lily Dale!” The girl’s eyes lit. “I’ve heard of it. We talk about it over on the Other Side all the time. It’s a place where people like you can talk to people like me.”
It was what Aunt Rosemary had always said. What I’d never let myself believe.
Now, faced with the existence of what I’d always thought of as impossible, I felt like the world had tipped on its axis. This was a new reality. Not one I was sure I liked. It would take me a while to get used to it.
My shoulders slumped. “Aunt Rosemary always told me I shared her Gift,” I admitted. “I just thought . . .”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t have believed it, either. I mean, not until . . .” Her voice trailed off and for a second, she dimmed, like a picture slowly going out of focus.
Before I could stop myself, I stepped forward, one hand out toward her. “Don’t leave!”
She winked back into focus. “You’re telling me you want me to hang around?”
“I’m telling you I need to understand what’s going on here. Why are you here?”
As if she had to think about it, she cocked her head and considered the question. Finally, her footsteps silent, she led me over to the right of the stairway, where the basement opened up into a dark room. What with her being incorporeal and all, I wasn’t really sure she could operate a light switch so I saved her the embarrassment of trying and failing and flicked on the overhead lights.
The room was vast and the light was too dim to illuminate it completely. It was filled with shadows—behind the long, narrow bar along the far wall, next to the couple tables piled in a corner, and in the space beyond a stack of wooden chairs that looked as if they had a lifetime’s worth of dust on them. Like so many of the rooms upstairs, this one was paneled in rich, heavy wood, and the floor, now spotted with dirt and coated with grime, was the same parquet pattern as in the ballroom.
The heavy odor of mildew filled my nose, and yes, I couldn’t help it, I checked out each and every dark corner. I’d already come up against one ghost. I wondered if there were more of her kind lurking in the shadows.
Fortunately, the room was empty.
It was lonely, too.
“Used to be old man Dennison’s place,” the girl told me.
“Yeah, sure.” I twitched away the quiet and the weight of history that settled on my shoulders. “The whole house was his. His family sold it to the club after Dennison’s death.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m no Dumb Kuff, I know that. But this place . . .” She swept out on an arm. “See, this was his private gin mill.”
I’m sure my blank expression gave away my confusion because the girl tossed her head and her dark sleek hair glimmered in the light. “Don’t you get it? It was a juice joint! A blind pig! A speakeasy!”
My breath caught. “Chauncey Dennison, the millionaire businessman, ran a speakeasy out of the basement of his mansion?”
The girl laughed. “You got that right, sister. Dennison, he was an egg, all right—a big shot, sure, but he liked to throw back a couple every now and then, and he was no goof. Smart, if you know what I mean.”
I did. Or at least I thought I did. Back in the 1920s when Chauncey Dennison still owned the mansion that was now the Portage Path Women’s Club, Prohibition was the law of the land and it was illegal to sell liquor in the United States. That’s when speakeasies popped up, secret places where patrons could dance the night away and drink to their hearts’—but maybe not their livers’—content.
“So Dennison ran this place and I bet he made a bundle selling illegal liquor here,” I said while I ventured farther into the room and glanced around the empty space and wondered what it looked like at the time. If there was one person who would know, it was the girl at my side.
“What’s your story?” I asked her. “And what are you doing here? Who are you?”
“Clementine Bow.” She made an exaggerated curtsy, then broke into a grin. “But you can call me Clemmie. Everybody does.”
“Everybody did, you mean.”
Her Cupid’s bow lips puckered. “You don’t need to rub it in. It ain’t my fault I’m dead.”
That was the first moment I had an inkling of an understanding of my aunt Rosemary. I mean, here I was, talking to someone from the Other Side, and suddenly I had a million questions that demanded answers. I figured I’d start with the easiest.
“How long have you been here?” I asked Clemmie.
She wrinkled her nose. “What year is it?”
I told her and her mouth screwed up. “I’m not so good at numbers,” she admitted. “But I know it’s been a good long time. I came here in 1927.”
Yes, it had been a while.
“And in all that time . . .” I wasn’t sure exactly how to ask so I took some time getting the words straight in my head. “When we bumped into each other for the first time the other night, you were surprised I could see you. That I could hear you.”
“You got that right, sister.”
“Does that mean, in all the time since 1927 . . . you haven’t talked? To anybody?”
She waved a hand in a way designed to make me think it was no big deal, but remember, I’d grown up with Aunt Rosemary, and like it or not, I’d heard plenty of lectures on watching body language and picking up on moods and emotions. Yeah, Aunt Rosemary said it all had to do with being an empath, but I knew better. Well, at least I’d always thought I knew better. Until I met Clemmie Bow. I knew that watching and listening and picking up on emotions was what it took to be a good listener, a good waitress, a good friend. Now I realized it had a lot to do with being a good medium, too. Sure, that little wave C
lemmie gave me was meant to show me how much she didn’t care, but there was a certain sadness in her eyes that made my throat clutch.
“I’ve talked plenty,” she said. “But no one . . .” She cleared her throat with a little cough. “No one ever heard me. I’ve been popping up all over this basement forever and a day. You’re the first one who’s ever seen me, all right. It’s the eel’s hips, that’s what it is. The eel’s hips to finally have somebody I can talk to.”
“Oh no!” As if it would stop her thinking what I feared she was thinking, I put out both my hands. “I told you, the last thing I want to do is communicate with the Other Side.”
“Except you’re already doing that.”
“Well, then I don’t want to do it all the time. You’re not going to . . .” I hated to even speak the words in case they might put ideas into her head. “You’re not going to follow me around and demand attention all the time, are you?” A thought hit, and I propped my fists on my hips. “Hey, are you the one who went through my rooms the day I moved in?”
“Bushwa!” She rolled her eyes. “You think I got nothin’ better to do?”
“Do you?”
She pressed her lips together and lifted her chin.
“You don’t.” Since she wouldn’t say the words, I saved her the trouble. “Was it you? Or do you know who it was?”
“No,” she said. “No, it wasn’t me. And no, I don’t know who done it.”
“Then what about anything else that’s happened around here? If you can float around all over the place and no one knows you’re there, you must have seen plenty and you must have heard plenty, too. What can you tell me? About Muriel?”
“You mean that Mrs. Grundy who came rollin’ down the steps the other night?”
“Not Mrs. Grundy,” I told her. “Mrs. Sadler. Muriel Sadler.”
I was, apparently, a dumb Dora after all, because Clemmie shook her head. “A Mrs. Grundy,” she said, “is a woman who’s straightlaced. High-strung. Uppity. You know the type.”