Beechwood Harbor was a small town and I doubted most of the residents even bothered to lock their windows and doors at night. The weather was getting warm and I’d seen plenty of houses, completely dark, but with windows left open all night to let in the cool evening breeze while they slept. It was unfathomable in a big city, but in this small community, there was a sense of trust. People didn’t even really seem to consider locking things up.
It wasn’t my modus operandi, but I decided to embrace it, at least for the next hour.
I locked the till money upstairs in my apartment, grabbed a couple of canvas bags and headed out.
Thistle was the nearest grocery store and was also my favorite. Normally, I liked to wander the aisles and take my time, but the city girl in me just couldn’t stop thinking about Lily Pond being unlocked and open so I hurried to gather the items from my small list and checked out.
Along the way back to the shop, I passed by the house that was at the center of the hotbed debate in town. The Lilac House stood proudly, like a retired beauty queen. It definitely needed a little TLC, but there was no reason to doubt that the house could be restored to its former glory.
I’d seen past episodes of Mints on the Pillows and knew that by the time they were done with the renovations, the house would be the town jewel, second only to the pristinely maintained Beechwood Manor on the other end of town. The two estates had been built around the same time, but there must have been some rule that the Beechwood Manor was not to be outdone. The Lilac House came pretty darn close, but just wasn’t quite as grand.
I paused on the sidewalk, a full grocery sack in each hand, and stared up at the house. The front porch was swathed in light from the sconces on either side of the expansive front door. Other lights were positioned around the front of the house, but all but one were turned off. A stray cat scurried away from the ring of light and I realized they were probably set up with some kind of motion sensor. With all the debate and heated exchanges that had occurred regarding the TV production taking place surrounding the house, I wasn’t surprised they’d taken extra security measures.
Unfortunately for them, none of that was going to stop a rampaging ghost if the party-crasher who blew out my front door decided to follow through on her ominous threat.
I chewed my lower lip; there wasn’t much I could do to stop her, either. My specialty was in talking to ghosts. Reasoning with them. If they wanted to go crazy and try to blow up the world, my hands were kind of tied.
I considered my new friend, Holly Boldt, and her pack of supernatural pals. They lived in the Beechwood Manor and each had their own specialties. We’d all met not too long after I moved into town. They might be able to help, but I still wasn’t sure how. There had to be a way to resolve the issue without resorting to magic wards or other drastic measures that they might come up with.
While I stood there mentally debating my options, a flicker of something caught my eye. Another cat? No … definitely not. It was a ghost; the shimmer of silver was unmistakable. It passed into the darkness between the flood lights and didn’t set off the triggers like the cat had.
“Hello?” I called out, taking a few steps up the front walk and throwing my voice a little higher than a whisper. “Hey! Wait!”
“Did you want to see what I can do if they don’t leave?”
I whipped around at the cold voice, goosebumps raising on my arms even as my pulse shot through the roof.
I frowned up at the sneering face of the ghost from earlier. “No, I’m fairly certain I got enough of a sneak peek back at my shop.”
She shrugged without an ounce of remorse. “I had to get my point across.”
Across the yard, another flood light turned on, sending another wave of blinding light across the yard. I opened my mouth to say something to the ghost when I noticed her eyes flick to some point beyond me. Curious, I started to turn, but was thrown forward to the ground.
I yelped as something hard was jabbed into my side.
“Move an inch and I’ll taser you.”
Chapter 3
“What are you doing? Get off of me!” I wriggled, frantic to get a look at whoever had just thrown me down into the dirt. Judging by the weight on my back, it was a large someone.
“Steady! Identify yourself,” the man barked.
He released the pressure on my shoulders and I thrashed over onto my back, chest heaving. A click sounded and a beam of light seared my face. I squinted against the harsh ray and then raised a hand to shield my watering eyes.
“Don’t move, I said!”
Ignoring him, I scurried back like some kind of panicked crab. “I’ll move if I want to! I wasn’t doing anything wrong, you deranged beast!”
A radio buzz chirped. The man raised a hand to his chest and spoke into a mic. “I got it. Trespasser.”
“Who are you?” I demanded, still not daring to stand.
The man stepped back. Under the glow of the nearby flood lights, I caught my first glimpse of his face. He was about my age, tall, and broad, dressed in a pair of jeans and a tight black t-shirt. My heart skittered and I cursed myself, knowing that sudden flip couldn’t be blamed on the shock. He fished into his front pocket and I halfway expected him to flash an FBI badge. Instead, it appeared to be a laminated card attached to a lanyard. “Lucas Greene. Head of security. Ma’am, are you aware that this is the set of a TV show? A closed set?”
“I know that,” I grunted and moved to get up. Slowly.
The man didn’t object. He crossed his arms, his t-shirt stretching even tighter.
I swallowed hard.
“We’ve had some vandals causing trouble lately,” he continued. “Know anything about that?”
I gave a hollow laugh. “No.”
“This is funny?”
I glared at him. “Not even a little bit.”
“What are you doing here, wandering the property? It’s nearly ten o’clock. Production has been shut down for hours, so don’t tell me you were hoping to snap a selfie and get an autograph.”
My eyes roved the yard on either side of him. Another one of the nearby flood lights had popped on, bathing the section of yard in blinding light. There wasn’t any sign of the angry ghost. Great.
“Hello?” the man snapped. “I asked you a question.”
I snarled. “Well, well, I’ll just bet you were at the top of your class in charm school.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“Yeah, big tough guy?” I said with disgust. I brushed my grassy palms off on the thighs of my faded jeans. “This is your job? Tackling innocent bystanders? You’ve got what, eighty pounds on me and yet you’re threatening me with a taser?” I barked a laugh.
“Hey, it’s not like I pointed a gun at you,” he said, unflinching.
I gawked for a moment. “And they say chivalry is dead.”
The contents of my grocery bags were scattered around me in an arc. Perfect. Just how I liked my produce: bruised and covered in grass clippings. Without asking, I snatched the Maglite from Mr. Tough Guy’s hand and started toward one of my cloth bags.
“Hey!” he lunged for me a moment too late.
“Does it look like I’m prepared to vandalize anything?” I snapped, stooping over to grab my grocery bag. “What was I going to do? I don’t even have eggs in here!” I huffed as I started repacking my ruined grocery haul. “Maybe I was going to chuck this cantaloupe through the front window?”
The man scoffed and set his hands on his narrow hips. “Maybe you were.”
I snorted and shoved the cantaloupe into the bottom of the sack. “Well, I wasn’t, all right? Guess you’re just going to have to take my word for it.”
With a heavy sigh, the brute squatted down and retrieved a head of lettuce that had come to rest by his booted feet. He handed it to me and I put it into the sack.
“Thank you,” I said between my teeth. “To answer your question, I saw a cat. I thought it might belong to someone. There aren’t a lot of stray cat
s around here, so I figured it got loose from someone’s house.”
I cast a sidelong glance at the man as he cursed under his breath. He handed me a can of beans and then ran his hand over the back of his neck. “I’m sorry about the misunderstanding, then. Everyone’s on edge from earlier.”
I glanced up at him as I loaded a bunch of bananas into the bag. “Earlier?”
“It’s the first day of demolition and the Carters were filming in the kitchen. All of a sudden, the equipment went berserk. I’ve never seen anything like it. They lost all of the footage and then, to make matters worse, one of the crew members got spooked by some weird noise and dropped a window. Thing cost twelve hundred bucks.” He winced. “It’s put us all in a foul mood.”
I straightened and slung the grocery bag higher up my arm. “And the vandalism?”
“That was earlier this week. Some punk kids broke into the house and spray painted an entire room neon green.” He dragged his hands down his handsome face and gave a dry laugh. “It’s been a nightmare.”
He dropped his hands but the hint of a grimace remained. For a flicker of a second, I almost forgave his earlier treatment.
Almost.
Now that he wasn’t trying to crush me, I took a closer look at his face. There was no denying he was attractive. He had a magnetic charisma about him, some kind of x-factor that made me acutely aware of his every movement. His hair was cut short, military-style. It wasn’t usually my favorite look, but I decided it worked for him. His face was tanned, as though he spent a significant amount of time in the sun. Either that or he was a fake n’ baker. I discarded the theory; he didn’t seem the type to stew in a tanning bed. Although, from the condition of his body, it was clear he hit up the gym on a regular basis. He had to have been close to six-two, probably hovering around two-twenty, and while his muscled physique was impressive, he didn’t look like a poster child for steroids. No, he was just the right amount of muscle-bound.
Not that it mattered. He was still a jerk.
With a sniff, I hoisted my other grocery bag up my arm to join the other. “Well, as you can see, I don’t have any spray paint or other mischief-making tools. I could probably whip up a killer salad, but that’s about as wild as I’m going to get tonight, all right?”
Lucas chuckled. “Right. Well, for future reference, this is a closed set, so please stick to the sidewalk.”
“Got it.” I resisted the urge to salute.
He stuck out his hand. “No hard feelings?”
I considered his hand for a moment: large, strong, and well-worn. The mature thing to do would be to shake it and accept his offer of peace. I wasn’t in the mood to be mature.
Lucas, realizing I wasn’t going to be so easy to smooth over, dropped his hand and pocketed it in the back of his well-fitting jeans. “You got a name?”
“Of course I do.”
He waited then chuckled again. “You’re a tough cookie, huh?”
I tilted my head. “Are you for real? You tackle me in the dirt, threaten me with fifty-thousand volts for having the audacity to walk across your turf, and now you want to act like we bumped elbows reaching for the same sugar shaker at Starbucks?”
He gave a half-cocked grin. “No dice?”
I shook my head but couldn’t help a small smile. “Afraid not.”
“Fair enough.” He gave a nod. “I guess I’ll have to wait and see if I catch you in line at the coffee shop, then.”
Without waiting for my mouth to go rogue and ramble off some other nonsense, I scurried away, heading back to the sidewalk while I was ahead. When my shoes hit the cement, I cast one last glance up at the house, wondering if the menacing ghost was lurking nearby, spitefully watching the whole exchange. I huffed and started down the street when Lucas raised a hand to wave. My Anger Management for Ghosts crash course was going to have to wait until another day. Preferably when the guard dog wasn’t on duty.
Gwen was still lingering at the shop when I got back. Hayward was at the front window wringing his hands, and my guess was that he’d been that way the entire time I’d been gone. There was no sign of Flapjack. He was likely curled up somewhere, ghost sleeping. Technically, ghosts didn’t need sleep, but he was a cat after all.
“Well, that was delightful,” I groused, stomping into the shop. The busted door swung closed behind me, the little bell jangling cheerily as if mocking me. “No good deed goes unpunished!”
Gwen lunged up from her place behind the counter and flew toward me, a panicked look on her face. “What happened?”
“I saw that ghost over at the Lilac property, but before I could confront her, I was tackled! Actually tackled!”
“Are you all right?” Hayward added, his face creased.
I nodded and deposited my grocery bags on the front counter to give my arms a rest. “More or less.”
“Who attacked you?” Gwen asked.
“Apparently the Carter’s have top notch security.” I rolled my wrists a few times and picked up the heavy bags again, then hustled through the back room to the large metal fire door that hid the staircase that led to my upstairs apartment. I paused at the door and transferred the grocery bags to one hand in order to retrieve the key ring from my front pocket. I unlocked the door and headed upstairs. Gwen and Hayward were there waiting when I opened the front door. “He said there’ve been some weird things happening at the house. People are getting spooked.”
Gwen pursed her lips. “Oh dear. I guess that woman wasn’t joking.”
“Apparently not.” I went through the apartment to the kitchen. The whole place was just under five hundred square feet but the layout was smart and made the most of the small space. There was a single bedroom and bathroom at one end, both small but functional. I spent most of my time in the open area that contained a small kitchen, dining nook, and a living room. My interior design tastes were a little outside the box. Eclectic, some would say.
I’d furnished it with second hand pieces from a local estate sale while the assortment of knick-knacks and decorative items reflected my near-decade spent abroad. The art on the walls were pieces I’d brought home with me in between trips. I kept two throw blankets hanging over the back of my couch; one was from India, the other from Honduras. My kitchen had ceramic and clay pots from a variety of countries that were used to hold everything from my collection of cooking utensils to my near-embarrassing amount of loose leaf teas. The place mats on the table were each from a different country and even my silverware was a mixed bag. My mother told me it was chaotic and confusing.
I loved it.
In the kitchen, I dropped the grocery bags onto the counters and started unloading the battered produce. I frowned at the bananas, already showing brown spots that I was convinced weren’t there before my encounter with Mr. Greene.
“He also said they were having issues with the filming equipment,” I continued, picking up the conversation from downstairs. “Sounds like textbook interference to me.”
“What are you going to do?” Gwen asked, joining me.
“I wanted to try talking to her, but beyond that, I’m not sure there’s much I can do.” I shrugged. “She wants me to find a way to shut down production and I simply don’t think that’s possible. What am I supposed to do? Walk onto set and tell them that they’ve angered the dead?”
“You could try,” Hayward suggested, moving into a spot opposite Gwen. He was head over heels for her, but for whatever reason, seemed to go out of his way to avoid getting too close to her. I chalked it up to his old-world manners. After all, courting rules from the eighteen hundreds were a little different than modern practices.
“Somehow I don’t think that would go over too well, Hayward.” I frowned at him and then turned back to finish unloading the groceries.
“Well we have to do something; we don’t want anyone to get hurt,” Gwen said.
“I know.” I sighed. “I’ll try to think of something.”
With the groceries sorted, I pulled
open the fridge and retrieved the pitcher of iced tea that I always kept filled. I poured a glass and then set it aside. “You know what’s weird? The fact that no one in the meeting tonight seemed to recognize her. How could she be living in the Lilac House and never have been seen by any of the other ghosts? I mean, Gwen, you’ve lived here for what, two decades? You’re sure you’ve never met her before?”
Gwen shook her head. “I swear, Scarlet, I have no idea who she is.”
I frowned into the amber liquid in my glass cup. “Weird.”
“I suppose we could try to talk some sense into her,” Hayward offered, looking at Gwen.
“At least you two would be able to get onto the property without being attacked,” I scowled.
“Do you suppose she’s still there?” Hayward asked me.
I put the pitcher of tea away and closed the refrigerator door. “I don’t know where else she’d be. Apparently she’s not much of a social butterfly.”
Hayward offered Gwen his arm, the picture of a true gentleman. “Shall we, my lady?”
Gwen giggled and surged forward to loop her arm through his. “See you later, Scarlet!”
“Stay out of trouble, you two,” I teased, flashing a wide smile at Hayward before they glided off together.
Once they were gone, I grabbed one of the bruised bananas and my glass of iced tea and went back downstairs. I considered the busted door as I ate the banana, my irritation levels rising the longer I stared at it. In all the years I’d been able to interact with ghosts, I’d had a few scuffles. Some people just don’t like the word no, and there’s no physical way for me to help everyone who comes to see me, but I’d never had a ghost full-out attack me or my property. It was equal parts unnerving and infuriating. It wasn’t like the woman, whoever she was, couldn’t have just come and asked for my help. Why the outburst? It didn’t make any sense. She hadn’t even given me the chance to offer my help before demanding it of me.
With a heavy sigh, I tossed the banana peel into the trash and then went into the back room. A pile of old flower boxes was stacked to the side of the back door and I selected a few of the larger ones and went to work cutting them to size. Within ten minutes, I managed to cobble together a double layer of cardboard to tape to the door frame in place of the glass. The temporary patch job didn’t inspire a lot of confidence, but it was the best I could do until morning, when I could go to the hardware store and get something a little sturdier until the landlord could get the whole thing repaired.
The Ghost Hunter Next Door: A Beechwood Harbor Ghost Mystery (Beechwood Harbor Ghost Mysteries Book 1) Page 3