A Valentine Wish

by Gina Wilkins

  “You don’t know where?”

  “No. Before I could start looking for him, I got busy with the problems at the paper. He completely slipped my mind after that.”

  “Then I guess I’ll just have to start calling nursing homes. I’ve been told to try the ones in Little Rock first.”

  “You really think this could be a lead? What if the old man really is senile?”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Dean said tiredly. “It’s not as though I have that many more leads to pursue.”

  He wondered when he would see Anna again to discuss his progress. And then he chided himself for making excuses, when the truth was that he just wanted to see Anna again, period.

  Mae was working in the newly restored lobby when Dean walked in. She looked up from the corner where she was sweeping up wood shavings left by the finish carpenters. “Back from another of your mysterious outings?” she asked with a faint smile.

  Dean knew his aunt was growing worried about him. He was well aware that his behavior during the past few weeks hadn’t exactly been typical, for him. But then, he would be surprised if he could act completely normal, considering that everything he’d once believed had so radically changed.

  He’d met a ghost, and was trying to solve her murder. And he was in danger of falling very hard for a woman who’d been dead seventy-five years.

  How could he behave as though nothing was different?

  “Just getting to know our new neighbors,” he assured his aunt with a vague smile of his own.

  “Making friends or new enemies?”

  He winced. “Er, what do you mean?”

  “I’ve heard that you aren’t making yourself overly popular with the Peavys. What’s going on, Dean? Why are you asking so many questions about the death of the Cameron twins?”

  He tried to look surprised. “Weren’t you the one who encouraged me to find out more about the history of the inn? Both you and Bailey said I should have answers ready if any of our guests ask about the Cameron legend.”

  “Well, yes; but aren’t you carrying it a little too far? A woman at the supermarket whispered to me that you practically accused Margaret Vandover’s late grandfather of murdering his stepchildren. Margaret was highly offended.”

  Gossip really did get around fast in this town, Dean thought wryly. He was surprised that Margaret had repeated Dean’s suspicions, as protective as she was of the family name. Or was she warning the townspeople not to cooperate with him in his quixotic quest for the truth?

  “Dean?” His aunt stepped closer and rested a hand on his arm. “Darling, is there something you want to talk to me about? Something that can help me understand the way you’ve been acting lately? Distant. Diestracted. Talking to yourself—you’ve never done that before. What’s bothering you, dear? Why can’t you talk to me about it?”

  He felt like a first-class, A-number-one jerk. He put his arms around his aunt and gave her a bracing hug.

  “Aunt Mae, please. Don’t worry about me. You know how I am when I get interested in something. It consumes me for a while. That’s what made me such a workaholic before. We’ve even talked about how I’d probably do the same thing with the inn that I’ve done with my other jobs.”

  She nodded against his shoulder. “It’s what makes you so successful at whatever you do,” she admitted. “You give it everything you have. But this ghost story—”

  “Part of the inn’s history,” he reminded her. “A very notorious part. If there’s any chance the legend will affect my success, one way or another, I want to be prepared.”

  “I suppose that makes sense,” Mae conceded doubtfully.

  “Sure it does. I just want to ask a few more questions, find out everything I can, and then I’ll forget all about it and concentrate on running the best inn and restaurant in all of central Arkansas,” he assured her.

  Not that he expected to forget about Mary Anna Cameron. Ever. But he saw no need to mention that particular obsession.

  His aunt was worried enough.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said, setting her gently away from him, “I’m going to concentrate on nothing but the inn for the rest of the day. It’s time I start pulling down those decrepit outbuildings before someone gets hurt.”

  “I wish you’d let the workers you hired take care of that,” Mae fretted. “You’re the one who could get hurt.”

  “I’ll be careful. Remember how we discussed that the more work we do ourselves, the more we can save on the total cost of renovations?”

  “You aren’t running low on funds, are you, Dean?”

  He made a face. “It’s taking everything I have,” he admitted. “But there’s enough left to finish. Let’s just hope business is brisk enough to keep us in beans and rice for the first year of business.”

  She smiled. “I’m sure you’re exaggerating, but I do hope business goes well. Do try not to antagonize all the locals, will you, dear?”

  “I’ll try, Aunt Mae,” he agreed, though he couldn’t promise he wouldn’t further infuriate the Peavys. Not if it meant clearing the twins’ names.

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, Dean was working in a small, eight-by-ten shed that might once have been used for storing gardening equipment. Though not in as poor shape as the shack at the end of the garden path, this building, too, had been allowed to fall into disrepair. Dean and the building contractor had agreed that it would be easier to tear it down and build a new garden shed than to try to restore this one.

  It wasn’t a difficult job. Basically, the building consisted of four wooden walls and a rough wooden floor. A window had been cut into one side wall, the glass long gone. A round vent hole, covered with a battered shutter, had been cut high into the back wall. The door was a simple, hinged sheet of plywood with a rusty padlock that no longer closed. Dean took that down first, and then started ripping off the rusted tin that covered the low, flat plywood roof.

  He stopped only once during the next hour, when his aunt summoned him inside for a telephone call. The telephone discussion with a plumbing-supplies distributor took some twenty minutes. Afterward, Dean went into the kitchen for a drink of water, then returned to the shed, hoping to get at least halfway through the job that afternoon.

  When the tin from the roof was stacked in a pile to be taken to a salvage yard, he moved inside the shed to decide where to start next. He sneezed as dust hovered in the air around him, disturbed by his work.

  A hairy black spider scuttled across the toe of his work boot; he left it alone. His sister had an almost phobic fear of spiders, but Dean had never shared her aversion to them. Nor had he ever ridiculed her because of it.

  The thought of Bailey made him wistful. He missed her. He wished she were here with him now.

  Bailey was the only person he knew who might understand if he told her about Anna. It wasn’t that Bailey had ever expressed an interest in the supernatural, but she had always believed Dean. Always.

  He was almost tempted to call her and tell her everything. But something held him back. Maybe he was afraid that this time, Bailey would be as skeptical as he knew everyone else would be should he reveal his relationship with the long-dead Mary Anna Cameron.

  Letting out a long, frustrated breath, he glanced upward. He noticed that someone had laid planks halfway across the open rafters, creating a loft of sorts. Had someone stored bags of fertilizer or mulch there? It seemed a logical supposition.

  Just then, he heard a rustling noise from one corner of the makeshift loft. Grimacing, he glanced at the retreating spider and wondered if mice had also made their winter home in this shed. He didn’t mind the bugs so much, but mice were a different story.

  Once, while Dean was exploring a horse-loving friend’s barn as a teenager, a mouse had run up the leg of his jeans. Dean had come out of those jeans right in front of three teenage girls and two male school pals, catching the mouse just as it reached sensitive territory. Since that incident, Dean had fought an unmanly temptation to jump on a chair every t
ime someone even said the word mouse.

  He turned his back to the loft. Maybe he’d go back to work outside. By the time he’d removed most of the walls, any creature residing in the shack should have taken the hint and departed.

  A scraping sound from above him caught his attention just as Mary Anna appeared in front of him. “Dean!” she cried, her voice distant and frantic. “Move!”

  Instinctively, he ducked and threw himself forward. Something hard and heavy hit him across the right shoulder. Something so heavy he collapsed beneath it. Had he not been moving forward, it would have hit him squarely on the head.

  Pain exploded from his injured shoulder and radiated through the rest of him as he landed jarringly on the dirty wooden floor. Whatever it was that had hit him now held him pinned. He was dimly conscious of a creaking noise from above him, and then a heavy thud that sounded as though it had come from just outside the shed. He hurt too much to try to figure out what he’d heard.

  “Dean. Oh, Dean, are you all right?” Anna hovered beside him, wringing her pale hands. “Can you move?”

  He groaned and shifted, the movement sending bursts of pain from his shoulder to the back of his head. “No,” he gasped. “It’s too heavy.”

  He tried to see what was holding him down, but he couldn’t turn his head that far. Whatever it was, it felt as though it weighed a ton.

  His right arm was numb, and he couldn’t move his fingers. Something warm and wet trickled beneath his torn sweatshirt and dripped onto the boards beneath him.

  “Anna,” he muttered, his vision blurring. “Help me.”

  “I can’t,” she said, her voice sounding like a sob. “I tried to move it, but I can’t.”

  His mind was spinning now, the pain from his arm and shoulder almost overwhelming. It took all his strength to form words. “Can you—can you bring someone to me?”

  “I’ll try,” she promised. “Oh, Dean, I’m so sorry.”

  He rested his forehead on the floor, oblivious now to the dirt and the roughness of the wood. “Get—help,” he muttered. And then he closed his eyes and allowed the darkness to engulf him.

  HE DIDN’T KNOW how much time passed before his aunt came to him. As he drifted in a haze of pain and confusion, it could have been minutes or hours for all he knew.

  “Dean! Oh, my God, what happened to you?” Mae knelt beside him, her hands on his face, at his throat. “Dear, can you talk to me?”

  He moaned. “I can’t—get up,” he managed to say.

  Mae ran to the door of the shed. “Cara,” she called loudly. “Call 911. And then come out here and help me. Hurry! Dean’s hurt!”

  Relieved that help had arrived, Dean tried to fight the darkness that threatened to take him again. He wanted to stay conscious, wanted to know just how badly he was hurt.

  He groaned when his aunt cautiously shifted the object lying across him. Every movement made his right arm and shoulder throb as though someone were kicking him.

  “I’m sorry, dear. Maybe Cara and I can lift it quickly without hurting you too much.”

  “Be careful,” Dean muttered. “It’s—heavy.”

  “I know. But I think the two of us can manage it.”

  “What—what is it?”

  “I don’t know. It looks like an old table. A potting bench, maybe. The top is wood, but the frame is metal. Oh, Dean, you’re bleeding. You have a bad cut on your right arm, all the way up to your shoulder.”

  He’d already guessed that. He hoped nothing was broken, nothing vital severed.

  He could only imagine what shape he would be in if the bench had hit his head. If Anna hadn’t—

  He tried to lift his head. He didn’t see Anna anywhere. “Aunt Mae ... how did you—”

  “Don’t talk, Dean. You need to conserve your strength.” it

  He stubbornly persisted. “How did you know I was in trouble?”

  She looked perplexed for a moment. “I don’t know, exactly. I was working m the lobby, and suddenly I had a very strong, almost panicky feeling that I should check on you. I’m just glad I paid attention to my feelings ... Oh, Cara, there you are. Let’s try to get this off of him, shall we?”

  Cara was already kneeling at Dean’s other side. “Should we try to move it? We could injure him more seriously. Help is on the way.”

  “Get it off, if you can,” Dean muttered. “It’s too damned heavy. I can hardly breathe.” He was starting to feel distinctly claustrophobic.

  Though Cara still seemed inclined to believe it would be better to wait, she allowed herself to be persuaded. She and Mae took hold of opposite sides of the bench, counted to three and then shifted it off Dean’s back in one smooth, forceful effort. They dropped the bench at Dean’s left side, then shoved it to one corner of the cramped shed and out of the way.

  Dean’s relief at having the weight removed was overwhelmed by a fresh wave of pain that crashed through him. He finally surrendered to it, and to the oblivion that followed. His last clear thought was of Anna, and of the fear and hopelessness in her eyes when she’d knelt beside him.

  FORTUNATELY, there were no broken bones, though the jagged cut that ran from Dean’s right shoulder almost down to his elbow required quite a few stitches. He left the emergency room of the small county hospital with his arm in a sling, his hip stinging from a tetanus shot, a bottle of painkillers in his left hand and the doctor’s long list of instructions still ringing in his ears.

  His ruined sweatshirt had been cut away; his bare chest was covered only by the bandages and the woolen jacket he kept in his car.

  His aunt hovered at his right side, guiding him as though he were a feeble old codger, he thought ruefully. Cara and Casey trailed behind them, their faces creased in almost identical expressions of concern. Cara drove Dean’s car, with Casey riding in the front passenger seat so that Dean and his aunt could share the back seat.

  “I’ll be fine, Aunt Mae,” he assured her for at least the hundredth time. “It hurts like he—heck,” he hastily amended with a glance at Casey, “but it’s nothing permanent. You heard the doctor.”

  “I heard him say how very lucky you were that the bench didn’t break your back or split your skull,” Mae retorted, clearly still badly shaken from the ordeal.

  Dean nodded meaningfully in the direction of the little girl who was listening so intently in the front seat. “None of that happened, Aunt Mae,” he said firmly, “it was just an unfortunate accident, and I’ll be fine. But I want all of you to stay away from those old buildings, you hear? Now we know just how dangerous they are. Right, Casey?”

  She nodded. “I won’t go near them, Mr. Gates,” she said fervently.

  “Good girl.”

  “Now you’ll have to hire someone to take them down,” Mae said with obvious satisfaction. “The doctor said you shouldn’t do any strenuous work with that arm for several weeks after the stitches are removed.”

  “I’ll talk to the contractor tomorrow,” Dean conceded.

  He rested his throbbing head against the back of his seat. Man, he was tired. And he ached all over. He knew that when all the painkillers wore off, his arm was going to hurt like a real son of a bitch. And he hated taking pills.

  He wanted to know what had happened. How that potting bench had gotten into the loft when he knew damned well it hadn’t been there earlier. What had made those scraping sounds he’d heard just before the bench had crashed down on him and what had caused that thud moments later?

  Maybe Anna would have some answers for him.

  MAE AND CARA insisted that Dean go straight to bed when they got home, though Dean protested that he was perfectly capable of sitting in a chair. They wouldn’t hear of it, and once he was lying down, he was secretly relieved he’d given in.

  They offered to bring him dinner on a tray, but he refused. His stomach was still too unsettled for solid food. He compromised by drinking a cup of bouillon. Aunt Mae didn’t leave him alone until she’d watched him take the painkillers the doc
tor had prescribed for him. Then, promising to check on him frequently, she tiptoed out of the room, turning out the overhead light and leaving only the dimmed bedside lamp to softly illuminate the room.

  Dean waited for Anna to appear—or at least he tried to wait. Pain, exhaustion and the strong medication were combining to make him sleepy. It was all he could do to hold his eyes open, scanning the shadowy corners of his bedroom for any sign of his dark-eyed ghost.

  Sleep won out. Dean closed his eyes and settled into the pillows with a deep sigh. He would talk to Anna later.

  He slept heavily. He roused a time or two when his aunt came in to check on him, and he assured her each time that he was fine and that he’d call out if he needed her during the night. Cara tiptoed in once, shyly feeling his forehead and then insisting that he take another pill. He murmured a grudging thank-you and a firm good-night, then closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

  His dreams were vivid, disturbing. Flashes of pain and that sense of helplessness he’d felt when he’d been pinned beneath the potting bench, alone in the shed, unable to move, not knowing whether anyone would find him before he bled to death. Memories of Anna, leaning over him, her voice broken as she’d cried out her inability to help him. Echoes of that shuffling, creaking noise above him just before Dean’s world had exploded in pain.

  And then he dreamed of Anna. Her cool hands against his face. Her lips moving beneath his.

  He shifted against the sheets, and his body throbbed with arousal now in addition to the underlying pain.

  “Anna,” he murmured, holding her close in his dreams. “Anna.”

  “Dean,” she whispered in return, her voice that musical, far-off litany that had haunted him, waking and dreaming.

  She caressed his face, and then moved her hands to stroke his shoulders, his bare chest, his stomach. He stirred beneath her touch, groaning when his injured arm protested the movement.