Faye smiled at Danielle and pointed down to the hallway. “First door to the right. But hurry back, dear. I’d love to hear all about our exhibit.”
Just as Danielle reached the hallway leading to the bathroom, the ball of light she had seen earlier appeared again. She stopped abruptly and watched wide-eyed as it whirled up and down the hallway. With a gulp she moved hastily to the door leading to the bathroom. Entering the room quickly, she closed the door behind her and locked it.
“I just need to get out of here,” Danielle mumbled aloud.
The next moment the ball of light came through the wall. Danielle stood frozen, making no attempt to use the facilities, but instead watched as the light swirled around the room a few moments before it landed before her, and then in a matter of seconds the light transformed into what appeared to be a man. But she knew it wasn’t a man. It was a ghost.
“Who are you?” Danielle asked. By his manner of dress, she guessed he had died decades earlier—perhaps in the 1930s or ’40s.
The man smiled. “You can see me! I thought earlier you did. Marvelous!”
“Who are you?” she repeated.
“No one of significance, just someone who has no desire to move on. And why should I? This is such a busy place, always someone new to chat with. Of course, none of them are ever someone like you.”
“Like me?” she asked.
“Alive,” he explained. “I’ve heard about people like you, who can talk to folks like us. But I have never met one before. Are you a friend of naughty Daisy?”
“Naughty Daisy?” Danielle frowned.
“Oh, the stories I could tell!” He laughed. “You know I was here when old man Morton kicked the bucket. It was about a month after I got here. But I’m not too good at time anymore. So maybe it was a year after they brought me here. I’d been fishing on the pier, fell in. I tell you what, never a good idea to drink alone while fishing on the pier late at night. I guess I was lucky; my body washed up on shore not far from here. My wife was pretty angry with me. But that’s another story.”
“Why did you stay?” Danielle asked.
“So much going on. My life was pretty boring. Get up every day. Go to work. Come home. Get nagged by the wife, kids whining. Day after day the same thing. But here, so much action! Right after I arrived, I met naughty Daisy, woohoo, a hot little thing. You should see what she was doing with that Leo character. Her dad had a fit! Fired him on the spot when he caught them doing what only a bride and groom should be doing on their wedding night. But I guess it was more than a fling. Leo came back after the old man kicked off and married her.”
“Wait a minute—Leo married Maisy,” Danielle argued. “Not Daisy.”
The ghost stubbornly shook his head. “Nope. It was Daisy, but everyone seems to think she’s her sister. That’s Daisy sitting out there, waiting for you. She was also here when her pop fell down the stairs. Woohoo, was he angry when he heard what she said to him after he died. Cold girl. Looking down at her father’s dead body, only regretting he hadn’t died sooner. Of course, she didn’t know he could hear what she was saying—or maybe she did.” He shrugged.
“Are you saying Daisy had something to do with her father’s death?”
He shook his head. “No. He fell down those stairs on his own. She just wasn’t particularly sorry to see him go. Now that other guy, both she and Leo helped him drive off Pilgrim’s Point.”
“Are you saying Lewis Samson was murdered?”
“Oh yeah. At least that’s what Lewis told me when they brought him in here. You know, they don’t always come in here with their bodies, so I don’t get to meet everyone who goes through this place. But Lewis followed his body here. He was pretty angry.”
“Why did they kill him?”
“Lewis knew it was really Daisy, not her sister. I don’t know what happened to Maisy, I just know Daisy is pretending to be her, and Lewis knew it. I guess when you really love someone, you can tell them from their twin sister. But what a schmuck. Falling in love with some broad who’ll snuff you out without blinking an eye. That’s naughty Daisy for you.”
Danielle glanced nervously to the closed bathroom door and back to the ghost. “I need to get out of here.”
“I don’t blame you. Someday I’ll move on too, but I keep waiting for naughty Daisy to kick off so I can ask her a couple of questions I have been dying to ask.” He laughed and then repeated, “Dying to ask!” He laughed again. “Get it? Dying to ask. I should have been a comedian!”
He disappeared.
“Is everything alright?” Faye asked when Danielle walked back into the waiting area several minutes later.
“Umm…yeah…” Danielle muttered.
“Norman called; he said he got tied up and will be another fifteen minutes. That will give us time for you to tell me all about the museum exhibit and our display.”
“I can’t stay. I’ll have to get my phone later,” Danielle said.
“Oh, please don’t go,” Faye begged, smiling sweetly.
Danielle silently studied Faye for a moment. The elderly woman seemed so feeble and old. No longer a physical threat—but if the spirit was to be believed, she had once been deadly.
If Danielle had thought for a moment Faye’s son would be walking in the door at any moment, she would not have uttered the next words. Instead, she would have quickly left and headed straight to the police station.
“Do you like chocolate?” Danielle asked impulsively.
Faye stared at Danielle, confused by the question. Finally, she said, “No, actually, I don’t. Why do you ask?”
“You are Daisy Faye. You killed your sister and Kenneth, didn’t you? You also killed Lewis Samson. He knew your secret.”
“Oh my. You really have figured it all out, haven’t you?” Faye seemed unfazed by Danielle’s declaration.
“Those remains they found buried at your old house, it’s your sister and Kenneth, isn’t it? Kenneth wasn’t involved with you. He was involved with Maisy. The real Maisy.”
Faye shrugged. “I had no idea my sister had sold our house. Especially after she told me I could stay with her until I could afford my own place. Leo and I had it all worked out. We were going to move the bodies and dispose of them so no one would ever know, but then I found out the house had been sold and the new owner was moving in, in just a few days. It didn’t give us any time. We had to leave them there. And for all these years no one found them. Until now.”
“I guess you almost got away with murder.” Danielle turned to leave.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
Danielle turned back to Faye and was surprised to find the elderly woman pointing a small revolver at her. Her eyes widened.
“You need to stay here until my son returns,” Faye said sweetly.
Thirty-Seven
The first person Norman saw when he walked in the funeral home was Danielle. From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of his mother sitting on a chair, but with his attention on Danielle, he failed to notice the gun in his mother’s hand.
“Hi, Danielle,” Norman said cheerfully. “I would have thought you’d have been gone by now.”
Danielle stood quietly, glancing from Norman to his mother.
“Norman dear, why don’t you lock the front door in case someone tries to come in,” Faye said calmly.
Norman looked to his mother, prepared to ask her why he should lock the door, when he noticed what she was holding. His eyes widened.
“Mother? What are you doing? Is that my gun?”
“I said lock the door, now. So we can discuss this little problem without interruption,” Faye instructed.
Swallowing nervously, Norman walked back to the door, stumbling a bit as he did, while his mother continued to point the handgun at Danielle.
Once he locked the door, he said, “Okay, it’s locked. Now will you explain to me what is going on, and why are you pointing a gun at Danielle?”
“Because I found ou
t your mother has been impersonating her sister all these years,” Danielle told him. “Daisy Faye is your mother. Not Maisy Faye.”
“Shut up, you stupid girl,” Faye snapped. While her right hand continued to hold the gun, she pulled her left hand out from under the jacket on her lap. It held Danielle’s cellphone.
“What is she talking about, Mother?” Norman demanded.
“I’m your mother. I’m the same woman I have always been,” she told him.
“Maybe,” Danielle said. “But you’ve been using your sister’s identity all these years—after you murdered her and her fiancé and buried them in your backyard.”
Frowning, Norman looked frantically from Danielle to Faye.
“I had to do it, for us,” Faye told him. “Your grandfather cut me out of the will because I was in love with your father. If we had listened to your grandfather, you would never have been born. This was all for you!”
“I don’t understand,” Norman said numbly.
“He left it all to my sister. I didn’t mean to kill her, you need to know that. It was all a terrible accident.”
“Then we can tell them it was all an accident,” Norman suggested.
Faye shook her head. “No, dear. Don’t you understand? You will lose all this. Your business, your home. It all came from Maisy’s inheritance. Do you actually think they’ll let you keep it?”
Agitated, Norman rubbed the heel of his right hand against his forehead. “But how can they prove any of this?”
“That’s who they found in the backyard of my old house,” Faye told him. “If Danielle tells them what she knows, then they’ll make us give them DNA, and then they will know—they will know one of those people they found was my sister.”
“What do you want to do?” Norman asked.
“If it was just me, I would let Danielle leave. I’m an old woman; I’ve already lived my life. But you. You will lose everything. So come, take Danielle’s cellphone, and I’ll tell you what we need to do.”
Danielle warily watched as Norman walked to his mother and took the phone from her. He glanced from Faye to Danielle, back to his mother.
“Listen carefully,” Faye told him. “You need to take Danielle’s phone and put it in her car. They always track these things, and once they realize she is missing, they will use her cellphone to find her. Then you need to move her car. I’ll keep her here, and when you return, we can take care of her. We’ll give her a proper respectable cremation.”
Norman took the phone from Faye. Holding it for a moment, he looked at it and then looked to Danielle, who stared at him through wide eyes, her complexion chalk white. He nodded at his mother and slipped the phone in his pocket.
“I think we should take care of Danielle first,” Norman said. “I don’t want her getting away from you while I’m out moving her car.” Norman put out his hand for the gun. “If she decides to run for it, you’re not as steady with that thing as you used to be.”
“What are you going to do?” Faye asked.
“I certainly don’t want to shoot her in here—we don’t need to get her blood all over the place. I’ll take her in the back and handle it. Give me the gun, and you wait here.”
Faye smiled up at Norman. “You were always a good boy.” She handed him the gun.
Now holding the pistol, Norman walked to Danielle.
“Please, you don’t want to do this,” Danielle begged. “Like your mother said, she has lived her life, what can they really do to her? And there’s a chance you could still keep all this. You don’t want to kill someone.”
“I seriously doubt I will be able to keep any of this, considering it never belonged to my parents,” Norman began. “Plus, I know my mother. Even if she thought I wouldn’t lose a thing, she would still insist we do this. There is no way she would allow herself to spend a single day in jail.” Norman shoved his free hand in his pocket and pulled out the cellphone. He then handed it to Danielle.
“Call the police,” Norman said in a quiet voice. He turned to his mother and slipped the gun in his pocket.
“Norman!” Faye screeched. “What are you doing?”
“I’m certainly not killing an innocent woman,” Norman retorted.
“But you’re going to lose everything! And I will not spend my remaining years in some prison!”
“If I lose everything, so be it,” Norman said calmly. “I don’t even know you, Mother.”
Norman sat slumped over on the sofa, his forehead buried in the palms of his hands as his elbows rested against his knees. Standing in the room with him were several police officers, who were explaining to him what was going to happen next.
Outside the funeral home, Danielle stood with Walt and Lily, watching as Brian Henderson escorted Daisy Faye Morton Bateman to a squad car, the elderly woman’s hands cuffed.
“I’m going to sue you all!” Faye shouted. “I am Maisy Faye not Daisy Faye! If Daisy was buried with Kenneth, I didn’t do it! But I know who did!”
As Brian opened the back door of the squad car for her, she said, “It was probably Lewis Samson! He was in love with Daisy! He didn’t want her running off with Kenneth! That’s who killed them! And he felt so guilty about it he killed himself! That’s who did it! Not me!”
“That is actually a pretty good theory for the defense,” Danielle commented from the sidelines, out of earshot of Brian or Faye. “If she hadn’t held me at gunpoint and plotted to kill me with her son, while basically confirming to me she was Daisy, maybe a jury would buy it.”
“I’d like to know why you didn’t just leave when you realized she was Daisy and had been responsible for three deaths?” Walt asked. “Was it necessary to stick around and have a chat?”
“How did I know she was going to whip out a gun?” Danielle asked. “She seemed like a harmless little old lady. What could she do, the two of us all alone? I thought I could take her if she tried something. And she said Norman wouldn’t be back for at least fifteen minutes.”
“And you believed her? A serial killer?” Lily snapped. “A gun in the hand of this not so harmless little old lady.”
Walt nodded at Lily in agreement.
“Okay. I admit it was foolish of me to stick around. I should have gone straight to the police station and told the chief what I had learned. But…”
“But what?” Walt asked.
“I wanted to make sure it really was Daisy. Spirits don’t always tell the truth.”
“How did you plan to do that?” Lily asked.
“I asked her if she liked chocolate. Remember that essay Maisy wrote when she was in elementary school? How she liked chocolate and her sister didn’t?”
“While you were off trying to get yourself shot, Walt and I had already figured out Faye was not Maisy,” Lily announced.
“And exactly how did you do that?” Danielle asked, looking from Lily to Walt.
“My dream. It wasn’t Maisy Faye—a live person—I met. It was her spirit.”
“Her spirit?” Danielle frowned.
“Sure,” Lily said. “Poor Maisy probably didn’t see it coming, so when she left her body, she ended up next door—at Marlow House.”
“I don’t think either of us understood we were dead at the time. And when Maisy talked about Angela, I think she might have been talking about Angela’s spirit. Maisy very well could have gone to the cemetery—perhaps looking for Kenneth’s spirit—and met Angela there.”
“If you think about it, Dani,” Lily began, “that has to be what it was. Walt said the Maisy Faye he remembered looked exactly like the twins in that portrait.”
“Sometimes the reality of a spirit who hasn’t yet acknowledged his or her death can seem disjointed—a little like a dream. Not a dream hop. But a regular dream. And like our dreams, we just accepted the confusion—the disjointed nature of what was happening—without questioning it,” Walt explained.
Thirty-Eight
The Beach Drive mediums and friends gathered around the dining room ta
ble at Marlow House that evening, discussing what had unfolded at the funeral home. Walt sat at the head of the table with Danielle to his left. Across from Danielle and to Walt’s right, Chris sat. He had provided the dinner, bringing several boxes of pizza, chicken wings, and pasta salad from the local pizzeria. Lily sat to Chris’s right, and on the other side of her was Heather. Ian was still in California. Across the table on Danielle’s side was Eva and Marie, who were visible to everyone but Lily. While Lily couldn’t see or hear the two spirits, she knew they were there.
As food was passed around the table—enjoyed by everyone but the two ghosts—Marie said, “Danielle, please tell Lily I left a gift for the baby over in the nursery. She can see it in the morning.”
Danielle conveyed the message.
“A gift? Oh, Marie, how sweet. Where did you get a gift?” Lily asked.
“Tell Lily she’ll just have to wait and see.”
“She says you’ll have to wait and see. That’s sweet, Marie. Now I’m curious too,” Danielle said.
“A baby gift?” Eva muttered under her breath. “What shall I get the baby?”
“I’m not only sweet, I know what I’m talking about. Didn’t I tell you all that stuff Margaret was saying about Maisy was nonsense?”
“Yes, you did, Marie,” Danielle conceded as she grabbed a slice of pepperoni pizza and set it on her paper plate.
“Marie did what?” Lily asked.
“She told us Margaret didn’t know what she was talking about.”
Lily frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Remember at the July Fourth party, Margaret said Maisy wasn’t as nice as everyone claimed. Basically said Daisy was the nice one—the misunderstood one—and Kenneth fell for her after he saw how poorly Maisy treated her,” Danielle reminded. “Back then Marie told us Margaret didn’t know what she was talking about. And she was right.”
“Yes, I was,” Marie said with a nod.
“It’s obvious what Daisy was doing back then,” Danielle said. “She used Margaret’s sister to make people believe she had run away with Kenneth by that letter she had her mail. That worked so well, she got other people to send more Daisy letters back to Frederickport so everyone would assume she was Maisy, and Daisy was off traveling the world.”
The Ghost and the Baby Page 24