by Molly Macrae
For me, the study wasn’t quite so private. Two others also loved it and spent time there—the cat and a ghost named Geneva. I hadn’t believed in ghosts until I met Geneva. And there were times I wished I hadn’t met her so I could stop believing in the other odd things that had entered my life recently. Nothing against her personally.
I still didn’t know much about her. I had reason to believe she’d lived sometime during the nineteenth century, but pegging her age and era more specifically wasn’t easy. She didn’t like being pressed for details about her life or death and it didn’t help that she wasn’t ever any clearer to my eyes than someone seen through a ripple of water.
Cat and ghost were both in the window seat when I reached the study. The cat raised his chin in greeting, but before I could say hello, Geneva put her nose in the air and vanished. I shook my head. Ghosts. Go figure. Maybe I would find out what that snub was about and maybe I wouldn’t. I was definitely on a learning curve, but I was coming to realize ghosts were a lot like cats. They were finicky and they needed a certain amount of downtime. And just as a woman shouldn’t have too many cats, if she could help it she probably shouldn’t have too many ghosts, or she might end up being called a crazy ghost lady. Or just plain crazy. The crazy part was something I worried about because, crazy as it seemed, the cat and I were the only ones who saw or heard Geneva. And that sometimes made my life difficult, or at least tricky.
Before we met, Geneva had lived, for lack of a better word, in the caretaker’s cottage at the local living history site. She didn’t haunt the cottage in the traditional sense, because the caretaker hadn’t known she existed. But she did haunt—as in spent every second of every day in—the room where the caretaker left his television permanently on, and she’d developed an insatiable appetite for cop shows, talk shows, old movies, Westerns, and reruns of fifties and sixties sitcoms. All that accumulated pop culture gave an interesting twist to her personality.
I scritched the cat between his ears and he obligingly started his motor. I never had found out where he came from, but he’d arrived looking as though he’d stuck his paw in an electrical outlet. The vet said she thought he might have been tossed out of a moving car, poor old guy. He bore the world no grudges, though, and after a few months of hard napping and gentle cosseting, he was becoming quite the dapper fellow. He was a lovely ginger tom with a white bib and a white fur mustache that turned upward as though it curled at the ends. The only problem was what to call him. Geneva tried a new name every few days, but our agreement was that we both had to like a name, and so far that hadn’t happened.
The three of us actually got along fairly well. We clicked, the cat, the ghost, and I. Maybe because of what we had in common—loss, disorientation, the need for a place to anchor. Maybe the reasons weren’t important.
I gave Mr. No Name’s chin a rub for good measure, then did a slow three-sixty of the room, pivoting on my heel and wondering where I should start. Where did one begin to search for secret journals? And really search, not just bemusedly, skeptically check around? Because I had kept an eye out for the journals when I put Granny’s papers and desk in order, but at that point it didn’t surprise me when I didn’t find them.
I didn’t bother asking myself when I’d started believing the journals existed. Anyone who previously hadn’t believed in ghosts, who now shared a cat with one, shouldn’t spend too much time examining beliefs.
The journals, according to Granny’s letter, contained her recipes for special dyes that allowed her to help her neighbors out of certain pickles from time to time. She didn’t specify what she meant by “help,” “pickles,” or “from time to time,” but she thought the whole thing was marvelous and was sure I would, too. Maybe if everything else in my life hadn’t fallen apart at the same time Granny died, my reaction would have been more enthusiastic.
But even if I obviously hadn’t known Granny as well as I thought, I did think she would understand my need to sort, straighten, and organize my life back into some semblance of order before looking for her journals. So that’s how I’d filled my hours and days since I’d packed my belongings in Illinois and moved to Blue Plum, telling myself I was busy and productive and was not avoiding the journals. But now their time had come.
I continued my slow three-sixty of the room. It wasn’t a large space. It was the finished part of the attic, walled off from the rest and made cozy by my grandfather, who had enjoyed woodworking as much as Granny had enjoyed her fibers and weaving. He had built the bookcases, too. I’d looked through the books on the shelves, in case the journals were disguised and in plain sight. That would have been too obvious, though, and not safe enough if she was concerned about prying eyes, and I didn’t find them there.
Granddaddy had found Granny’s desk as a derelict at the flea market and refinished it for her. It was one of those old, heavy oak teacher’s desks, and Granny said she never wanted to know how he got it up the three flights of stairs and around the last tight corner into the study. I’d looked the desk over carefully for false-bottom drawers and secret panels. No luck there, either. Granny was clever, though, and she was confident that I was clever, too. She wouldn’t hide the journals where it was too hard to get at them. Maybe under a hinged floorboard?
Geneva floated back in while I was crawling around examining, tapping, and attempting to pry.
“You can grovel all you like,” she said. “It won’t make me feel any better.”
“Sorry?” I sat back on my heels and pushed my hair behind my ears. “What are you talking about?”
“Me. You left me behind this morning.”
“Is that what you were in a grump about a few minutes ago? You said you didn’t want to come with me.”
“And then I changed my mind, but you’d already left without me.” She looked at me and waited. I waited, too. “Well, I can see you aren’t going to apologize, so I’ll be kind and forgive you for that. But then…” She stopped and heaved a throbbing sigh.
“‘Then’ what?”
“You didn’t tell me. I had to hear about it from a customer just now, and she was buying the most horrible shade of orange rug wool while she was talking about it. The whole experience was too much.” She had a tendency to billow when she was upset, and she tended to upset herself with her own melodrama. I scooted back to give her more room.
“Are you talking about what happened at Debbie’s farm? Geneva, I was going to tell you.”
“But you didn’t.”
“Because you left, but I was going to.”
“Really?”
“Of course. I knew you’d be interested.”
She blew her nose. “Okay. I feel better.”
“Good. So now tell me what you heard, but first, do you know who the woman was that you heard it from?”
“Besides being someone with painful taste? No, I have no idea.”
“What did she look like?”
“That is such an uninteresting detail compared to what she said. Why does it matter?”
“I just wondered if it was one of the women at Debbie’s this morning, except I don’t see how it could’ve been. You know Debbie and you’ve seen Ernestine and Thea often enough. I’m sure it wasn’t Bonny. What did the woman look like?”
“Her hair was straight and stringy, much like her figure.”
“Well, no, that doesn’t describe any of us.”
“I don’t know Bonny, but I imagine her grief will work on her so that she begins to fade away,” Geneva said with some relish. “That is a sad fact of bereavement, except perhaps in your case. You were not stringy when we first met, and even though you’ve suffered through the death of your dear grandmother and the loss of your job and your home and all your friends and—”
“Is there a point you’re trying to make?”
“Yes. I’ve noticed that you have become less stringy since we met. I thought I should mention that to show how accurate I am at describing people.”
Said she who nee
d never worry about gaining another ounce for all eternity. I was glad I’d asked only for the salad for lunch. “Thank you, Ms. Eagle Eye. The point is, who was this woman, where did she hear about what happened, and when, and how far has the story already spread?”
“Maybe she was the murderer.” Geneva billowed in and out, excited by that thought.
“Calm down. She wasn’t. It was pretty clear, even to me, what happened. I don’t think anyone’s going to be looking for a murderer.”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“Really. Well, maybe you’d better tell me what you did hear.”
“Oh good, because it is a good story and I think I can tell it with true inspiration. Marshal Dillon would like to hear it, too, though, so you sit next to him.”
Now was not the time to argue over the cat’s name or his interest in crime. I sat cross-legged beside him in the window seat. He woke long enough to climb into my lap and purr before falling back asleep. Geneva floated into the middle of the room, wispy arms artfully poised.
“You give me my cue,” she stage-whispered.
“Oh, for…Okay. Begin.”
And she did, launching into a short but dramatic retelling of what she’d heard. Or maybe it was her own, more colorful interpretation of what she’d heard. The basics were accurate—a young couple dead under a tree—but in this version they were found with their arms twined around each other, both were murdered, there was more blood than I ever wanted to hear about again, and no weapon was found.
“Um—wow—thanks, Geneva. That was—gee—that was vivid. You know, though, I think maybe the woman you heard the story from might have confused a few of the details.”
“Well, she probably didn’t see it in person. That could be why,” Geneva said, sounding even-keeled and ready to forgive the woman’s excess rather than explode at my questioning of her rendition.
“If that’s the story she’s telling, then, no, I’m pretty sure she didn’t see it in person.” I stopped and thought about that. Unless she’d been with the deputies and EMTs who responded, but then she wouldn’t have gotten the details so wrong and in fact might still be on duty out there, not here buying rug wool. That meant either an exaggerated story was already running around town, something Ardis and Ernestine warned me would happen, or Geneva was the source of the embroidery. The former would be hurtful to Bonny when it reached her ears, as it was sure to. As for the latter, it seemed disrespectful to Bonny and to the dead to let Geneva continue spinning that yarn, even if the cat and I were the only ones hearing it. Calling her out on the embellishments would be treading dangerous ground, though. Maybe if I approached it from a detective’s point of view.
“You know, Geneva, if we were investigating what happened—”
“Are we?” She billowed toward me, empty eyes wider than I’d ever seen them.
“Investigating? No. You might hear Debbie and Ardis saying something about me looking into it—”
“But you told them you couldn’t do it—”
“Exactly.”
“—on your own.”
“What? No, that’s not what I said.”
She didn’t hear me. She was over the moon. She was also all over the room, whirling and squealing with delight, like a crazed balloon someone blew up and suddenly let go. The squeal wasn’t a pleasant noise, and the whirling was going to make me sick. I closed my eyes and covered my ears, and that’s how Joe Dunbar found me when he trotted up the back stairs to say he’d brought lunch.
Chapter 5
“Kath? Hey, are you okay?”
When I finally realized there was someone else in the room besides the berserk ghost, I opened my eyes. Joe, younger brother of the antagonistic Deputy Cole Dunbar, was crouched in front of me, peering into my face. The cat had left my lap and was sitting next to me, following Geneva’s acrobatics.
“I heard what happened,” Joe said. “Ardis said you and Debbie found them. That was a hell of a thing to happen. It must’ve been a hell of a thing to see. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I am, thanks. Thanks for asking. I was…” I couldn’t think of a good ending for that sentence.
“You looked as though you were trying to blot out the whole world,” he said.
“Sometimes it helps.”
“Fishing’s good for that, too. It’s good to have a place where you can get away. Be alone.”
If he’d been aware of Geneva swooping past his head doing bad Clint Eastwood imitations, he wouldn’t have been so philosophical. She was calming down, though, and being the nosy thing she was, circled him a few times, then settled in the window seat on the other side of the cat. Ghost and cat sat watching Joe as though he were the most exotic creature to set foot in the attic. Joe held his hand out and the cat sniffed his fingertips, then rubbed the side of his face against them. Geneva reached a wispy hand forward.
“So, Joe,” I said, hopping up and startling him so he dropped his hand and sat back on his heels out of Geneva’s reach. “How’s Maggie?”
“Same as ever,” he said, getting to his feet. “She’s a sweetheart.”
Those two statements didn’t go together, in my experience of pretty Maggie. She was Granny’s cat, whom I’d also inherited. But Maggie’s “as ever” when it came to her opinion of me was the same as that of every other cat Granny had ever had—intense dislike with occasional swatting. It was an interesting phenomenon that baffled Granny and saddened me. But Maggie liked Joe, and after thumbing her nose at me, she went to live with him.
“Have you got a name for your guy yet?” he asked.
“No, still working on it.”
“We are not,” Geneva said. “Marshal Dillon likes his name and it’s as fine as they come. Oh, but wait. I’ve had a thought. It’s rather brilliant. Harry Callahan. Dirty Harry.” She bounced and billowed at her own brilliance. “It suits him, don’t you think?”
I squeezed my eyes shut to blot her out for a moment. Forgetting Joe. He grabbed my elbow.
“Are you sure you’re all right? Maybe you stood up too fast.”
“Could be.”
“Your salad’s down in the kitchen. You should go eat.”
“And while you’re doing that, Dirty Harry and I will be on stakeout in the shop,” Geneva said. “We’ll gather intelligence and report back after your luncheon date.”
Brilliant.
My luncheon date was wishful thinking on Geneva’s part. Joe Dunbar was nice enough, and he was nominally a member of the posse, but it seemed to be a general principle that Dunbars and I had trouble mixing. Anyone glancing at me and noting the lack of a ring on my finger and the absence of PTA meetings in my thirty-nine-year-old life might extend the mixing principle to me and men in general. To them, I would say, be patient. Miracles happen. Witness the cat who actually liked me and sat in my lap. And at least I hadn’t socked this Dunbar in the nose.
But Joe had some baggage I wasn’t too sure about. One of those bags had to do with burglary that might or might not be a habit. The one incident I knew about could have been a first-and-last-time deal, and no one else I knew and trusted seemed to worry about there being a sketchy side to him. His brother, the starched deputy, did seem to worry, but I didn’t particularly trust his brother. Besides, Clod’s worries might be nothing more than brotherly baggage.
Joe had some saving graces, too, though, so I tried to keep an open mind. One of those graces was his tendency to avoid his brother. Another was what Geneva noticed—not only was he nice enough; he was also nice to look at. Whereas his brother was tall, solid, and mulishly stubborn, Joe was tall, spare, and scruffy in an artistic, outdoorsy sort of way, and he had an easy, accepting manner. Geneva referred to Joe as my gentleman caller, convinced we were an item. Reminding her we weren’t was a waste of breath.
Joe’s most telling grace was his affection for my grandmother and her apparent affection for him. I still wondered why, if they were such pals, I hadn’t known of his existence until recently, but I had an
idea the baggage thing might be a factor there, too. For now it was enough to know he’d liked her and she’d trusted him. Ardis trusted him, too, and that said a lot.
But Joe didn’t join me for lunch downstairs in the kitchen. I didn’t ask where he was off to and he didn’t volunteer the information. He was a man with many trickles, if not streams, of income. He was a sought-after fly-fishing guide and he taught the occasional fly-tying class for us at the Weaver’s Cat. He was also a more than decent watercolorist and did a fairly decent business selling his paintings at another shop in town. A regular Renaissance man, with baggage, was Joe Dunbar. But solo fishing up one or another secluded mountain creek was his go-to way of passing a lovely afternoon. Or so he said.
Geneva did join me over lunch to give her first intelligence report. The cat followed her into the kitchen. He purred and twined his furry self around my ankles, and I was still enough in the early sappy stage of cat cohabitation that I found it utterly charming. If he’d asked to share my salad I would have simpered and given him a leaf or two of spinach and a bite of carrot. But he wanted dry, crunchy, fish-smelling things, so I tipped some of those into his bowl. The way he dug in and smacked his little cat lips made his lunch look and sound better than mine. I’d left the dressing off, remembering Geneva’s observation of my increasing lack of stringiness. Her opinionated remarks were taking some getting used to. I was definitely still in the early, perplexed, “why me?” stage of being haunted.
“I hope you appreciate what I’m doing for you,” she said, hovering across from me, elbows not quite on the table. “Although I don’t want you to think I begrudge spending my precious time listening for a clue that will crack the case wide open while you sit out here eating. Alone. Do you know, though, for every customer with something interesting to say about the murders, I have to keep awake through a dozen boring conversations? It’s exhausting.” She yawned to prove it.