Melody Bittersweet and the Girls' Ghostbusting Agency

by Kitty French

  She prickles at his use of her full name; it’s so rarely used that it feels like a reprimand, which of course is precisely his sarcastic intent.

  ‘Nothing better to do than hang off my coattails, Gunn?’ Leo’s eyes bore into Fletch.

  ‘Cape,’ Marina mutters beside me. Artie flanks me on the other side, watching everything with wide eyes.

  Fletch eyes Leo’s attire, his eyebrows raised in amusement. ‘Who have you come as today, Dark? A cut-price Mr Darcy for the post-Jeremy Kyle crowd?’

  Much as I can see the cause for comparison, I hate that between us we’re giving Fletch a story he’ll dine out on for weeks. My grandmother is in her dressing gown on the lawn, for God’s sake.

  ‘I almost hesitate to ask what’s going on here,’ he says. ‘I mean I can hazard a good guess. Bunch of fakers exposed colluding to con the public into believing farcical ghost shite on live television. Blah blah blah. Is there any more to the story or should I wrap it up and go for an early lunch?’

  Gran takes a slow drag from her cigarette and exhales an elegant plume of smoke, not unlike Marlene Dietrich in a black and white movie.

  ‘Your gran is the only person alive who can still make smoking look sexy,’ Marina says in open admiration.

  ‘She’s had long enough to practise it,’ I mutter, still sour with her for causing this entire debacle.

  ‘I knew your grandmother, Fletcher Gunn.’ She wafts her cigarette holder airily in his direction. ‘Wonderful woman. Used to come and see me every other Friday after she lost your Grandpa Ron.’ She smiles a faraway smile. ‘Now he was as character. Not unlike you, in looks at least.’

  ‘Don’t bother, Dicey,’ he laughs, even though he’s anything but amused. ‘Save your tea leaf reading for someone more gullible.’

  Gran smiles benignly, completely unconcerned by Fletch’s rudeness. ‘I’m surprised you’re so scared of what you can’t see, given how forward-thinking she was, but then . . . you’re male.’

  She’s getting under his skin; I can see a muscle flickering in his cheek.

  ‘Gran, you’re really not helping here. Go inside and put some clothes on at least?’

  ‘I came like this, darling, I have my leotard underneath. Quite a thrill for the taxi driver this morning, I should imagine.’

  I hand Artie the keys to Babs. ‘Take Gran back to the van and wait for me?’

  He nods and steps forward, glad to have a purpose.

  ‘Shall we, Mrs B?’

  I watch as he offers Gran his arm, which she accepts with a sniffy glance at Fletch.

  ‘Thank you, Arthur, what beautiful manners you have. I find that chivalry is terribly underrated by the youth of today.’

  She allows him to escort her away. I breathe a sigh of relief once she’s safely out of earshot. If only I could get rid of Fletcher Gunn so easily.

  ‘I still think it might be better if we step inside,’ I say to Leo, deliberately ignoring my least favourite reporter on the planet.

  Leo shakes his head with a huff. ‘What, so you can insist again that this wasn’t your doing? Come on, Melody. We both know how jealous you are of my success. I knew you felt threatened, but this is just a step too far. Dicey could have ruined my career. In fact she still might have. It’s not you that has to go and explain to the production team what the fuck happened back there, is it?’

  As he speaks, the Barbie Twins make their way down the garden path as if it’s a model’s runway. They glide to a halt a little way behind him. Fletch perks up considerably.

  ‘Nikki and Vikki,’ I say quietly to Marina, remembering their names.

  ‘No fucking way,’ she laughs under her breath.

  Leo seems bolstered by the arrival of his troops. ‘You know something, Melody? It doesn’t even matter whether you knew about Dicey’s stunt beforehand or not, because the fact is that it happened because of you and your stubborn insistence on poking around in my business. You just declared war on live fucking television, and I hereby notify you of my intent to blast you and your ridiculous . . .’ he waves an arm in the vague direction of Babs ‘wagon right off the face of this goddamn planet!’

  He jerks his head towards the twins, a signal that they should follow him as he stalks away. To be honest, I’m taken aback by the level of his vitriol and how willing he is to believe that I’d stoop so low. Maybe that sliver off my heart that was forever his just grew a little smaller.

  Fletch throws the twins a wink as they walk past him. ‘Can I join your war cabinet, ladies? I promise to be a bad boy.’

  Leo swings back around just long enough to growl ‘Fuck off, Fletcher,’ before he yanks open his car door and ushers the twins inside. Jesus, the testosterone coming off the pair of them is making the air hazy, it’s like heat rising from melting concrete on the hottest day of summer. Leo stares at me right before he slides into the driver’s seat and mutters ‘war,’ then screeches off. If he could have made his tyres smoke, he would have.

  ‘He’s hardly Winston Churchill, is he?’ Marina quips, as we watch him go. Her phone starts to ring inside her bra and she excuses herself, shooting me an apologetic look as she walks away towards Babs.

  ‘Just you and me then, ghostbuster,’ Fletch grins. ‘You still up for taking this inside and giving me an exclusive?’

  ‘You should be so lucky,’ I snark, because I’ve just remembered what Marina said about him checking out my backside the last time he was here. There’s no way I’m letting him into Scarborough House again, to look at my bum or anything else.

  ‘It wasn’t a come-on,’ he assures me, laughing. ‘Unless you want it to be.’

  ‘Do you have to flirt with everyone in a skirt? It makes you look seedy.’ I load my comment with as much derision as is possible, because I’m annoyed by the tiny ripple of interest that just skittered down my back at his words. I know, I know. It’s just that he’s hot and I’m going through a dry spell. I still hate him, even if my brain wants to register that his eyes are the colour of forest moss today and that the way he rolls his shirt sleeves back is sexy.

  He looks over his shoulder. ‘You talking to me or one of your imaginary friends again, Bittersweet?’

  ‘You should go now. There’s nothing to see here and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I give you an exclusive.’

  His eyes slide slowly over my Willo The Wisp T-shirt. For the record, Evil Edna was my heroine.

  ‘Better buy yourself a decent coat then, sweetheart.’

  I watch him saunter off towards his car parked a little way down from the house and desperately want to sling an insult at him. I can’t say anything about his car, it’s a pretty cool, old navy blue Saab. I mean it’s not Babs cool, obviously, but it’s the kind of car that you’d be impressed by if a blind date turned up in it. It says ‘I’m different, I think outside the lines’. I can’t really pick holes in his dress sense either seeing as he somehow pulls off looking like he’s stepped from a dishevelled GQ shoot, and the lawn has only recently been vacated by my grandmother in her dressing gown. He manages to make office dress look totally unrespectable, somehow, as if he’s always straddling the gap between work and sliding into the nearest bar to down a double vodka. You know how some office guys wear cheap shirts you can see through and character ties that just aren’t funny? Fletch is so not that guy. As I watch him leave I notice his dark-charcoal shirt clings to him in in all the right places, just enough to accentuate his shoulders and skim his biceps as he moves, and I can’t imagine he’s worn a tie since the day he left school.

  I snarl with frustration as he slams his door, feeling as if he’s got one over on me. Mostly because he has.

  * * *

  Climbing back into the van a few minutes later, I throw Artie a grateful smile for clambering into the back and allowing Gran to take his seat beside Marina. Not that she’d have climbed into the back anyway, but like her, I appreciate his good manners.

  I don’t speak until I’ve hurled Babs sharply around a few co
rners to get my pent up aggression out.

  ‘Nice work, Gran. Like, thanks a sodding million.’

  She shrugs. ‘It was nothing, darling.’

  ‘Oh, it was something, alright.’ A thought occurs to me. ‘Did Mum know you were doing this?’

  Gran’s expression is conflicted. ‘Not exactly. I think she’d probably have vetoed it, so I didn’t tell her. Shame really, I think she might have had more success with Lloyd than I did. He’s a prickly one.’

  ‘Did they talk to you?’ I can’t keep up my angry act when there’s a chance that Gran might have learned something useful from the Scarborough brothers.

  She leans her head back against the scuffed seat with a sigh and closes her eyes. ‘There’s a saying that comes to mind here, darling, something about not teaching your grandma to suck eggs, if I’m not mistaken.’

  I huff under my breath and shake my head as I turn onto the far end of Chapelwick High Street, knowing that she’s going to make me work for not being more appreciative of her unorthodox intervention. The thing is, I’m sure that in her head she thought she was helping me. I know she meant well, even if what she actually did was more harm than help.

  ‘Okay, Gran,’ I say, ignoring Marina’s half-cough/half-laugh because she knows I’m about to try to eat humble pie without choking on it. ‘It was kind of you to try to help. I sort of appreciate that you didn’t intend to discredit our entire profession and make us all look like a bunch of cowboys.’

  Gran opens her eyes and stares at me, and Marina’s slow shake of the head tells me that my opening gambit is not quite humble enough.

  ‘What I mean is that I know this came from a good place.’

  ‘You sound like an American therapist, Melody.’

  Gran closes her eyes and I seize the opportunity to pull a face at her because I’m having one hell of a frustrating day. She opens one eye, sees my face-pulling and then closes it again.

  ‘That was extremely childish of you.’

  Marina leans forward and picks up my gran’s hand. ‘What Melody is trying to say is that we all think that what you did back there was amazeballs, Dicey, and we are all entirely grateful to you for trying to help.’

  I nod through gritted teeth, even though Gran’s eyes are still closed.

  ‘And it would be a big help to us if you could please tell us if the Scarborough brothers told you anything of interest, if you don’t mind,’ Artie interjects from behind us in his best professional voice, despite the fact that he isn’t belted in and has had to wedge himself between the back of the passenger bench and the wheel-arch to stop himself from being flung around the back of the van like a spaceman in zero gravity.

  After a pause Gran finally opens her eyes. ‘Seeing as you asked so politely,’ she says, knotting the long string of pearls around her neck. ‘I gather that there’s ill feeling between Isaac and Lloyd.’

  ‘Well that’s putting it mildly, given that one of them killed their brother and they’re both trying to blame each other,’ I mutter, distracted by a white van man who just cut in front of us. When I blast my horn, he flips me the bird through his open window. I reply in kind with the universal sign for knob-head. Having the last word in the altercation goes a small way towards alleviating my grumpiness. I turn my attention back to Gran.

  ‘I found the same thing with Lloyd. He was no more chatty with you then?’

  Gran looks thoughtful. ‘Not very forthcoming, no. He doesn’t want you meddling. I know that much. Nor Leo. He’s prepared to allow the sale of the house with them in situ. It’s Isaac and Douglas who are causing the uproar.’

  ‘Hmm, that’s what I got too. Looking into the available history of the house, which isn’t much, it seems that Isaac was generally held to blame for stabbing Douglas. He was never convicted, but his family cut him off and he never returned to the house again while he was alive.’ I pull into the cobbled cartway at the side of Blithe Spirits and Babs shudders with relief as I kill the engine. ‘Sad, really.’

  ‘If he didn’t do it, that is,’ Marina adds.

  ‘True. He’s easily the most forthcoming of the three, but he’s clearly furious and I’ve yet to work out what it is that I need to do to help.’

  Marina unclicks her seat belt. ‘Solve the mystery of who killed Douglas Scarborough, at a guess.’

  ‘He’s rather a dashing chap, isn’t he?’ Gran says, folding her kimono over her knees in readiness to disembark Babs. ‘Quite the looker.’

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I lie, blatantly. Marina raises her eyebrows knowingly and laughs.

  ‘Well, that explains why your cheeks were pink when he was around. You never mentioned our Dougie was a hottie.’

  I shake my head, caught out. ‘Marina, he’s been stone cold dead for more than a century. He’s just about as far from a hottie as he could possibly be.’

  * * *

  I bring the conversation to an abrupt end by jumping out of the van and opening the back door for Artie to climb out. He stretches his long legs and then rounds Babs to help Gran to step down in as dignified a manner as possible for a pensioner in her dressing gown.

  ‘Is that all I need to do? Solve a murder?’ I say, wondering how the hell I’m supposed to do something that the police force failed to over a hundred years ago. ‘I’ll have this thing all wrapped up before dinner then.’

  ‘You could always ask your Magic 8 Ball,’ Marina suggests, then calls out ‘Great job today, Dicey!’

  Gran lifts a hand in a close approximation of the royal wave as she disappears off in the direction of Blithe Spirits. From the back she looks like a good-time girl doing the walk of shame after coming home on the back of a milk cart unsuitably dressed for the time of the day.

  ‘I should probably head off,’ Marina says, looking at the time on her mobile. ‘Mum called and asked if I could get home early to watch Grandpa.’ She hugs me briefly. ‘Well, that’s our first successful week in business done.’

  ‘High-five for us.’ I grin as I step away and look at my own watch. ‘You may as well knock off too, Artie, it’s after three. We’re not going to get much else done today.’

  He nods, rolling his shoulders. I hope he’s not checking to see if they’re broken after his rocket-ship-style ride in the back of Babs.

  ‘I’ll give you a lift if you like,’ Marina offers, digging around in her bag for her car keys. ‘I’m going that way.’

  I watch them stroll away towards the High Street. ‘Hey, Artie. Make sure you come back on Monday,’ I call. He turns around and gives me his goofy laugh. He’ll be back.

  All quiet at last, I settle behind my desk for an hour before I clock out with the last two of Nonna Malone’s cannoli and the case file for Scarborough House. One week down. It’s certainly been interesting and Artie is turning out to be a bit of a revelation, but I really didn’t expect to have to solve a murder enquiry in my first week of business.

  I fill my face with cannoli and sigh in the silence, trying not to dwell on the fact that right now, Marina’s suggestion of consulting my Magic 8 Ball to see who killed Douglas Scarborough feels like a viable suggestion. Please, please let me sort this out, I pray, to no God in particular. I’m not the religious kind, unless there happens to be a Goddess of sweet things, because if there is I’ll fall down on my knees and swear allegiance right now. I’d happily swallow a holy sugar lump and beg for divine assistance. Please help me, Candy Goddess, because I’m twenty-seven now, and despite my optimism and wise-cracking to get through each day, I mostly feel like a kid terrified that I’m going to screw up. Starting the agency has been brilliant in so many ways, I don’t have enough fingers to count them, but it’s also scary as hell. I’m scared of letting Marina and Artie down, of letting the Scarborough’s down, and of letting myself down. I was never lucky enough to know my dad, but I’m scared of letting him down too.

  This whole thing really, really needs to work.

  Chapter Ten

  It’s Saturday morning and I hope
for their sake that whoever is banging on my door has a damn good reason. I was in the middle of one of my favourite recurring dreams, one where Thor comes and rescues me from the ice palace I’m trapped in for no discernible reason. What? So superheroes factor highly in my dreams. We all have our oddities, and that’s one of mine. If a man can fly, turn green or smash things with an improbably big sledgehammer, I’m forever his girl. It strikes me momentarily that Leo is the only man I know in real life who is game enough to wear a cape, but I dismiss the thought as quickly as it arrived and haul my ass out of bed to answer the door.

  ‘Melody Bittersweet?’ Dwayne, my postman, queries even though I went to school with his sister and he knows perfectly well who I am.

  ‘I am she.’ I hold my hand out and accept the package, frowning. I haven’t ordered anything I can think of.

  ‘Feels like a book to me,’ Dwayne says, looking it over as if he expects me to open it on the doorstep to satisfy his curiosity.

  ‘Is it your policy to feel everyone’s mail, or just mine?’

  His face cracks into a grin that is anything but innocent. ‘Oh, I’m selective these days. Got caught out handling a woman off the estate’s sex toys a while back.’ The smile falls from his face and he leans a little closer. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but they were second hand off eBay.’ He shudders. ‘Not even bubble wrapped. I mean, who does that?’

  ‘I honestly don’t want to know,’ I say, closing the door. I gave up Thor for this.

  It is a book, but not one I’ve ordered. The postmark tells me that it was sent from Hay-on-Wye, which is odd because I don’t know anyone there, and there is no accompanying note, which is even odder. Why would someone send me an anonymous gift? I turn the book over in my hands and study the embossed gold title. One thing’s for sure, this hasn’t been delivered to me by accident.

  Twenty Years’ Experience as a Ghost-Hunter by Elliott O’ Donnell. It’s old; battered, emerald-green leather with gilt-edged pages and is quite hefty. I peep inside at the date of publication; 1917.