by Eryn Scott
Well, except for my grandmother. Asher had liked her. And even though she couldn’t see him or talk to him like me, she’d been the first person in a while he cared to be around. When my grandma had been murdered right under his nose, he vowed to involve himself in what was happening in the lives of the living and nonliving souls of Pebble Cove in hopes he might stop another such injustice from happening.
Asher continued his story. “They said that one night, the other guy took it too far and set Murray and Stephen’s boat on fire. I do remember seeing this. It was an enormous blaze right outside the cove.”
I gasped, gulping down more iced tea and wishing I had a bowl of popcorn or something.
“The terrible part was, the guy didn’t realize that Stephen was on the boat. There had been a few other arsons around town, minor things like sheds and such, but the police hadn’t taken it very seriously. The boat changed all that. They found cans of gasoline at the guy’s house, along with some other damning pieces of evidence, and convicted him. He went to jail for a long time. Murray and Tabitha got a huge insurance payout. Murray found himself a job on another fishing boat, and Tabitha left, too torn up about losing Stephen to stay in Pebble Cove.” Asher shrugged. “Until now, I guess.”
I sat back, like I’d experienced that whole drama in actual time. “Yikes. If she burned through her settlement money, she might be back to get what’s left of Murray’s.”
Asher puffed out his cheeks. “So Tabitha has a motive, given their quickie marriage. I’m still unconvinced she would’ve had the opportunity to poison his drink, but I didn’t have my eyes on her hands the whole time. If she’s sneaky, I suppose it’s possible.”
“And Jolene has a motive as the scorned lover and had an opportunity to have poisoned the drink,” I said with a cringe, hating to admit it. “Though she assumed that drink was going to Tabitha, so it’s possible she was trying to off Murray’s new wife instead of him.”
“Good point.” Asher ran his fingers through his hair. “Yes, it could’ve been a case of poisoning the wrong person.”
“Very Shakespearean.” I clicked my tongue.
Asher widened his eyes in agreement. We’d been reading through a few of the Bard’s plays in our evening reading time.
“Let’s hope this is more of a comedy than a tragedy,” he said.
Chuckling, I asked, “What’s the difference?” They all seemed dark to me.
“In the tragedies, it seems like everyone dies,” Asher explained, “and in the comedies, everyone just pretends to die.”
Murray’s pale face flashed into my memory. I gulped. “I don’t think Murray was faking anything.”
Asher grimaced. “Right. Well, at least we can hope this tragedy has a less bloody ending than those in Shakespeare’s body of work.”
“To do that, we need to figure out what killed Murray and who would’ve had access to it.” I stared out at the ocean. “I need to figure out a way into the police station.”
Asher put his hands up, showing he wouldn’t be able to help with that. They had constructed the police station building in the eighties, long after Asher’s time. He could only appear in places he’d visited when he was alive. This meant that most of the historical buildings of downtown were easily accessible even if they’d been upgraded. But anything that was new construction—like the police station, the new library, and town hall—was out.
I sighed, wondering if Tim, Max, or Lois, the other spirits in town, had any reason to set foot in the building when they’d been alive.
Sitting up, I said, “I know of at least one ghost who spent a lot of time in that building.”
Asher chuckled. “It might be more helpful to find someone who can talk, but Meow’s a good place to start.”
The next day, after our morning “rush,” I plunked a pitcher of iced tea on the bar. The sound echoed through the empty room.
“That’s it. I’m going to town to hang flyers about these new iced tea ice cubes. I don’t care anymore if it seems pathetic or if people will whisper behind my back about how I’m probably desperate after Jolene’s shop reopened.” I swiped at the line of sweat collecting on my forehead.
Asher crossed his arms in front of his chest, shooting me a sidelong glance. Okay, he was right to doubt me. I cared very much about people whispering behind my back and giving me looks full of pity.
My childhood bout with leukemia had given me emotional baggage that seemed harder to get rid of than the disease itself. During those years, people were always staring at me in that sorry way. Either their heads would tip to one side or their lips would push forward ever so slightly. Especially when I lost all my hair because of my treatment, I saw it in their eyes. They would wince as if it hurt even to look at me.
Adults and children alike seemed to know everything about me, things I hadn’t told them, like they’d had conversations about me when I was out of the room—something I’d found out later had been true.
And even though Pebble Cove felt like a place where I could be myself, where I was overcoming some of those old neuroses, just talking about people whispering behind my back made me break out into a cold sweat.
I cleared my throat. “So maybe I do care. But I need money more. And I have to go into town to talk to Meow anyway.”
Asher gave me a salute. “Give the former mayor my compliments.”
“You’re not going to come with?” I asked, swiping a line through the condensation forming on the cool glass of the iced tea pitcher.
Asher glanced away. “I’m okay.”
His words hit me like a sneaker wave out on the beach, taking out my legs. He loved coming to town with me. Which meant that the secrets I’d been keeping about his death had more lasting consequences than I’d initially realized. Things had gone back to normal with us after our small fight, or so I’d thought.
I studied the countertop of the bar instead of his face. “Well, we did promise Carl that we would look into this for him.”
“Technically you promised to help, not me.”
I chewed on my bottom lip, maybe in an effort to keep it from sticking out in a childish pout. But … we did everything together. He’d helped me solve my grandmother’s murder last year, and this was supposed to get us back to normal.
“Oh, sorry, I just …” I stopped, not sure I was ready to admit what I thought aloud, what I hoped.
Seeing my disappointment, Asher softened.
“Okay.” Asher didn’t exactly perk up, but he nodded. “I’ll go with you. See you there.” He disappeared.
I pressed my lips forward into a frown. “Well, I still have to create the flyers and close up the shop, but …” I mumbled, getting to work.
Asher reappeared, wearing a mischievous grin. “Just kidding. I know you have to make the flyers. I’ll help with your font choices.”
The exasperated eye roll I gave him didn’t cover the delighted smile that pulled across my face. A couple of months ago, I’d used Comic Sans for a tea shop sign, and Asher hadn’t let me hear the end of it since.
A half hour on Publisher, twenty minutes fighting with the printer, and a drive to town later, Asher and I wandered along the boardwalk of downtown Pebble Cove.
The midday heat bore down on us—well, only me, really—as we walked by the Marina Mug, a small café and sandwich shop perched at the entrance to the marina. Despite the plethora of fans whirring inside and the flung-open doors, it looked downright toasty.
The only souls who seemed to enjoy the heat were two cats sunning themselves in the middle of the ramp leading down to the boats. The lanky, young black cat was Pebble Cove’s acting mayor, Whiskers. Meow was stretched out right next to her.
I pointed them out to Asher. “Do you suppose they’re lying together because they’re family?” I asked.
Whiskers was Meow’s great granddaughter and was carrying out the tradition with poise and honor based on the few times I’d seen her about town.
“I think Meow enjoys lying
next to Whiskers because then people won’t walk through him,” Asher said.
Meow had a habit of laying in the middle of walkways like his granddaughter, but now that he was a ghost only I could see, people didn’t go around or step over him like they used to. Even though their feet wafted through him, the former mayor still looked perturbed each time it happened.
“Can Whiskers tell Meow is there?” I asked.
“I don’t know. You should go ask her,” Asher said with a grin.
I fought the urge to elbow him. While Meow seemed to understand us, his methods of communicating back were limited to head bobs, tail flicks, and meows. And while he’d helped us out with quite a few clues before, it wasn’t the most efficient method of ghostly assistance.
“Speaking of,” I said, turning to face Asher. “Why don’t you go check with the other spirits, and see if anyone in the group has ever been inside the police station, while I go hang these up.” I lifted the small stack of flyers about my special iced tea ice cubes.
Asher nodded and then vanished.
I’d brought five flyers printed in color on nice card stock. There were only four places to hang them, but I brought an extra in case. I pinned the first one on the community board at the front of Wallace’s Cove Grocer, waving to him as I did so. The second went up on the business board in the foyer of the town hall. The third went in the library, and the fourth would be for the small local attractions board in Triangle Park.
I gulped, glancing over at the Pebble Cove Tea Company as I stapled the last two flyers in the park. Triangle Park was where the chief had brought me and Tabitha yesterday for questioning.
Jolene’s teahouse was dark. Closed. The yellow crime scene tape still waved in the much tamer cove winds.
Had Clemenson told her she couldn’t reopen until he’d found out what—or who—had killed Murray, or was she closed out of guilt because she’d been the reason a person was dead?
Thinking back to the stories both Carl and Asher had told me about the intertwined backgrounds of the chief, Tabitha, Murray, and Jolene, I couldn’t help but wonder if more crimes were solved in small towns because everyone was close knit and knew everyone else’s secrets, or if less were since everyone seemed connected and, therefore, less likely to turn in someone they loved.
“Quite the mess. Quite. The. Mess,” a voice said over my shoulder.
I let out a yip and jumped. When I whipped around, I found the Rickster standing next to me, staring at the crime scene tape.
Exhaling my relief, I nodded.
“Too bad we’ll never know what really happened,” he said, scratching at his white beard.
Head shooting back in surprise, I said, “What? Why?”
The Rickster chuckled, patting my shoulder. “Ah, innocence. Or maybe you’re still too new around here to realize that when Pebble Cove police don’t want a crime to be solved, it isn’t.”
“Why wouldn’t the police want a crime to be solved?” I asked, but the question lost all steam by the end as I realized I’d wondered something very similar.
The way Chief Clemenson had treated Tabitha yesterday, as if she wasn’t even a suspect, felt like another ticked box in the column against them.
The Rickster must’ve seen me putting the pieces together because he didn’t answer my question, only touched his nose. “If I was a betting man, I’d bet my lottery winnings on this whole case getting thrown out because some evidence goes missing or is tampered with.” He tsked and walked away as if that sentence wouldn’t elicit a million questions.
Was the Rickster saying the police here were corrupt? I’d heard rumblings of issues before but never about Chief Clemenson. Was I wrong about the man? Also, the Rickster had won the lottery? Wasn’t the lottery considered gambling?
As the Rickster walked away, Asher popped up near me, startling me a second time.
“People need to stop doing that.” I shook my arms, wiggling away my jitters.
“I have good news and bad news,” Asher said, wrinkling his nose.
“Good first, always,” I said.
“Lois has been in the police station.”
My face brightened for a second, but it plunged back into a frown. “And what’s the bad news?”
“She says she won’t help you.” Just as Asher said this, a foul-looking Lois appeared, her arms crossed in front of her chest and a glower marring her features.
5
After checking to make sure no one was around to see me pleading with thin air, I stepped forward. “Lois, why won’t you help?” Before she answered, I turned toward Asher. “Did you tell her it’s about getting justice for a murder victim?”
Asher opened a palm, gesturing toward the other ghost in an “of course I did” way.
Whirling to focus on Lois, I softened my face. “I thought we were frien—” I stopped short, when her harsh expression reminded me that was not the word to use in this situation. “I thought you didn’t hate me anymore,” I amended.
A few months ago, I’d convinced Lois to get out of the house and live her afterlife with a ghost named Max who I’d known was interested in her. Since then, she’d been happier, and much nicer.
The woman’s stern mask slipped for a split second, but it snapped back into place. “Contrary to what you seem to believe, Rosemary, not everything is about you, and people don’t have to do terrible things just because you want them to.”
Terrible things?
I shuffled my foot in the grass and pretended to be looking at the water as a family passed by.
“What do you mean by terrible?” I asked after I was sure they were gone.
With Lois’s history, that might be one of any horrible memories plaguing her. Her awful husband had been physically abusive, one night pushing her so hard that she fell to her death from their cove side porch and onto the large rocks below. And while they’d been unable to convict her husband, the locals all guessed it was his fault, a conjecture that he confirmed a month later when he threw himself off the top of Desperation Cliff.
Exhaling, I realized that if Lois didn’t want to help, I couldn’t make her.
I looked back toward Asher. “I guess I’m going with Meow.”
Asher let his eyebrows rise. We all turned toward the two cats lying in the sun on the marina ramp, focusing on the ghost of the large tabby.
I scooped the air with my hand. “Come on, Meow. Let’s go to the police station and have a look around.”
The ghostly tabby glanced in my direction but didn’t move a muscle other than to blink. He flicked his tail lazily and turned to watch a seagull perching on the boardwalk.
“Meow, let’s go,” I said through clenched teeth, my gaze flicking back to Asher and Lois as my cheeks heated.
This time Meow didn’t even turn his head toward me.
Opening my hands, I let them fall by my side. “Okay, I guess I’ll go by myself.” I turned toward the police station.
Though I couldn’t hear him, I guessed Asher was following me, probably out of pity. I slowed my feet as I approached the station and pulled on the front door, planning what I would say. With no ghosts to help me snoop, I was left to seeing what information I could get on my own. I pulled the large door open and took a fortifying breath.
Inside the station, the air-conditioner was pumping out cool air, a benefit of being built in the last three decades. An officer, who looked fresh out of the academy, sat behind the reception desk. He smiled as I approached, but his face clouded over with concern as he caught my manic expression. I tried to soften my face.
“Hi. Can I help you with something?” His eyes strayed back to his computer screen as if I were an afterthought.
“Yes,” I said, trying to lean my forearm on the counter casually, but awkwardly missing it the first time. “I need to talk to the chief. There’s something I forgot to tell him about yesterday. Is he in his office?” I motioned down the hallway behind him.
“The chief is—er—he’s away from his
desk at the moment,” the young man said. His name tag read Officer Fischer.
A mental image of me waiting in the chief’s empty office made my skin prickle with anticipation. I could just see the case folder sitting out on his desk for me to peruse before the chief came back.
“That’s okay,” I said, all too eager. “I can wait for him. You seem pretty busy. I can walk myself down there.” I edged around the desk.
Officer Fischer stood, moving so he blocked my path. “Miss, you can’t go back there. I can take a message …” He held a hand poised over a notepad. His face reddened.
Shoulder sagging, I pressed my mouth in a thin line and craned my neck to see down the hall. “When do you expect the chief to come back?”
A bellowing voice came from around the corner. “Come back? I’m here! The chief is always here.”
Frowning, I took a step back. That didn’t sound like Chief Clemenson.
A tall man with a shock of black hair and an even darker expression came storming around the corner. He strode forward, holding his hand out. “I’m Chief Butler. How can I help you?”
I was about to reach out to meet the man’s handshake, when Officer Fischer turned away from me and walked straight through Chief Butler. I sucked in a quick breath.
“He’s very busy,” Officer Fischer said in answer to my earlier question as he returned to his chair.
My fingers curled into my palm, and I focused on the living officer instead of the dead chief, acting as if I were like everyone else who couldn’t see Chief Butler.
The ghost pulled back his hand. “Always worth a try,” he mumbled.
“Would you like to make an appointment to talk with him?” Officer Fischer asked.
“What does she think she has?” the ghost asked, looking me up and down. “More evidence? Another suspect to add to our list? I suppose I’ll allow it. And depending on whether the evidence helps us or hurts us, we might use it,” the ghost chief said with a chuckle. He leaned on the counter like I’d done moments before as if he were just one of the guys hanging at the station.