Deader Still: A Bridget Sway Novel (A Paranormal Ghost Cozy Mystery Series)

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  Oz opened the wardrobe doors. “There’s nothing in here.”

  I nodded solemnly. “I know. It’s a travesty.”

  He cursed softly and closed them again. He rested his forehead against the wood. I was guessing that wasn’t his happy stance. He stayed like that for maybe a minute. I wasn’t really sure what he was mad about since I hadn’t done anything wrong today, really. Apart from associate with an outlaw and partially haunt a travel agent. Neither he knew about.

  I tapped a rhythm out on my knees and waited. I hated this type of silence. The one where the other person was sifting through a myriad of emotions and despite them trying you knew anger would come out on top. I could deal with someone yelling at me, I just hated waiting for the yelling to start. Made me nervous. That was why I avoided those types of intense relationships. Michael-the-cheating-scumbag had never yelled at me. Though, in hindsight, dating someone who didn’t care enough to yell was probably not what would be considered a “good” life choice.

  I spoke into the silence. “You seem tense?” Silence. “Would you like a back rub?” Silence. “Maybe just the shoulders?” Silence. “Game of cards?” Silence. “Maybe some chocolate?” Silence. “How about a cup of tea?” My voice sounded oddly loud in the quiet.

  Oz straightened up away from the wardrobe. He grabbed the chair from my dressing table and sat opposite me. He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and pinned me with his gaze. When Officer Leonard or Johnson did it, it never bothered me. When Oz did it, I wanted to make myself as small as possible, as if that would make me so insignificant his gaze would roll past me.

  “Tell me everything.”

  “Everything’s quite a lot. Can you be more specific?”

  He inhaled through his nose then blew out through his open mouth. “I am trying incredibly hard not to lose my temper right now. Do you think you could help me out?”

  “I’ve already offered you a back rub and a cup of tea.”

  “This is not the time for your smart mouth to run away with itself. No.” He sat back and held his finger up in warning before I could deliver an awesome comeback. “No more dodging. No more half-truths. No more outright lies. You need to tell me everything. And don’t even think about crying right now.”

  “I’m offended that—”

  “No, you’re not. I know you were genuinely upset yesterday but I also know you’re smart enough to recognise your tears stopped our discussion and you’re devious enough to try it again to avoid telling me what you don’t want me to know.”

  “There’s really not—”

  “I thought I said no more lies.” He leaned forward again, rested his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers. “No more, Bridget. Just the truth. The whole truth.”

  “And nothing but the truth?”

  Oz nodded with a sigh and the hint of a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “That would be nice.”

  I was sifting through what parts of the whole truth Oz would accept and what parts would be best to simply forget about. Completely for his benefit. I didn’t want to give the poor man a heart attack now, did I?

  “I know right now you’re trying to decide what to tell me. No doubt for my own benefit so you don’t give me a stroke—”

  “I was thinking more heart attack.” I ran my fingers through my fringe. Was I that easy to read?

  “My heart’s just fine. I’m just waiting for you to be honest with me. I’m tired of fighting you.” When I didn’t immediately list all of my transgressions he hung his head to stare at the floor for a few seconds before looking back up at me. “Look, as a rule the GBs and the police force dislike each other, but when it comes to questioning suspects they’re on the same page. Usually. If you were anyone else you’d have been arrested and in a holding cell right now but Officer Leonard is protecting you from that and I don’t know why.”

  “Maybe because he’s a somewhat rational human being and he knows they’ve got no evidence against me.”

  Oz gestured to me again. “They’ve got more than enough to hold you. And yet they’re not.”

  “But that’s because they know I didn’t do it.”

  Oz arched an eyebrow. “Do they? Johnson seems pretty sure you did it.”

  “Johnson’s an idiot.”

  “Johnson works by the police mandate that if someone looks guilty, you hold them and keep investigating until you either have enough evidence to convict them or you find the real culprit. I’ve known cases where a dozen people have been held on suspicion of committing the same crime. This is the third murder you could have committed and yet you’re still free. The only reason I can see is that Leonard is using you as bait again by allowing you to try to solve it yourself. Which you’re not doing, right?”

  “Can you define exactly what you mean by trying to solve it myself?”

  “Are you involved with Jeremy Thomas Leith?”

  “What?” I frowned. Oz changed topic so fast he nearly gave me whiplash.

  “That psychic. He knows your life name. He can summon you any time he wants. Does he?”

  “No.” I didn’t think it was possible for me to sound firmer. “And he cannot summon me anytime he wants. He’s not strong enough.”

  “Who taught you how to resist a summoning of your life name?”

  “The lady you met at my funeral.” What the heck did Edith tell Oz her name was? And who told Oz that I could do that? Maybe Pete had just made a whole host of assumptions to get himself out of the “in the closet” trouble.

  “Julie?”

  I pointed to him, grateful that his memory was better than mine. “Yes.”

  “Really? Because she introduced herself to me as Janice.”

  “Ah.”

  “What did you do to Lulu and Michael?”

  I shook my head at him. Again with the abrupt topic change. “Who?”

  “Michael. Your ex-fiancé and his new—” Oz paused. “Partner.”

  “The Trollop’s name is Lulu?” She didn’t look like a Lulu to me. I narrowed my eyes at him. “How do you know her name and what makes you think I did anything to them?”

  “Where do you go at lunch times?”

  “Doesn’t your little homing chip tell you where I am?”

  Oz arched an eyebrow at me and shook his head. “Don’t give me attitude right now.”

  “Well, don’t pepper me with questions and not give me the chance to answer them,” I snapped back.

  The door burst open and Petal all but cartwheeled through it, landing on the floor in a heap of tangled limbs. Pam and Lucy stumbled in after her.

  I looked at them but Oz didn’t take his eyes off me. No one spoke.

  “We were wondering if you’d like a game of cards outside,” Lucy said when the silence stretched on.

  Petal frowned at Lucy. “No, we weren’t. We were—”

  “We were wondering if you could show us how you plaited Petal’s hair the other night,” Pam interrupted helping a confused Petal up from the floor.

  “The other night when you were all getting makeovers with stolen goods.” Oz was still focused on me but the other three shifted guiltily behind him.

  I stood. “I would love a game of cards.”

  I took a step towards them and Oz wrapped his fingers around my wrist, not physically restraining me, just reminding me we weren’t finished.

  “We’re just in the middle of something, ladies.” Oz finally glanced over his shoulder at them. “She’ll be down in a bit, okay?”

  “Can’t she come now?” Petal whined and shook her pale blonde hair out so it floated around her head like a fluffy cloud. “It’s an emergency.”

  “Yeah, can’t I go now?” I pointed to Petal’s hair. “That’s more than an emergency.”

  Oz looked me in the eyes. A wave of emotion passed over them and my stomach flipped like a pancake. It was a completely new and not entirely unpleasant sensation. I didn’t like it at all.

  “No. You can’t,” he said, his voice low. />
  “You’re not going to send her away like you did with Katie, are you?” Petal asked, tears already brimming in her eyes. “I liked Katie, but I like Bridget more. Like, loads more. Please don’t send her away.”

  Pam put an arm around Petal’s shoulders and Lucy took Petal’s hand in both of hers. The tone of the room changed from tense to sombre.

  “Who’s Katie?” I asked the room. “And why does everyone know about her but me?”

  “I’m not going to send her away, Petal, I’m not.” Oz gave my wrist a gentle tug urging me back to the bed, his voice soft. “She’ll be down in a bit, okay?”

  “You promise you won’t send her away?” Petal asked.

  Oz nodded. “I promise.”

  “You can’t break a promise.” Petal reminded him, her tone childlike. “You’ll get seven years bad luck.”

  “That’s a mirror.” Pam squeezed Petal closer with an arm still around her shoulders then fixed Oz with a hard stare I hadn’t thought she’d been capable of. “Breaking a promise makes you a bad person.”

  “A really, really, really bad person,” Lucy added, scowling at Oz before pulling Petal out of my room with several more backward scowls. Oz waited until the door closed and three pairs of feet headed down the stairs.

  I pointed at the closed door but looked down at Oz. “Who is this Katie person?”

  “Oh, you expect me to answer all of your questions but you won’t answer mine?” He let go of my wrist then folded his arms as I sat on the bed.

  “How about we play a game of quid pro quo?”

  “How about you answer my questions like a good parolee?”

  I shrugged. “Not as much fun.” Oz didn’t speak. He just waited for me. “If I tell you, you’ll tell me about Katie?”

  “You tell me and then we’ll see.”

  “This Katie person sounds like someone I should know about.”

  “I guess you’d better tell me the truth then.”

  “The truth from when?”

  Oz didn’t flinch. “From since you died.”

  “That’s a lot of truth.”

  Oz leaned back in the chair, arms folded. “Guess you better get started.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  “So how did your assessment go?” Sabrina asked as she sat down next to me at breakfast. She took one look at my face and sighed. “I’m beginning to think this afterlife is just not a safe place to be. Who was it this time?”

  “Jenny.”

  Sabrina cursed and pouted at her staple breakfast of honeyed toast. “That shoots our second suspect in the head.”

  “She wasn’t shot in the head,” I said, sipping my tea. “It was a blow to the back of the head.”

  “That seems to be the murder method of choice. Personally, I’m a little more partial to poison myself.”

  “I’ll remember that the next time you bring me lunch,” I said and quickly filled Sabrina in on the murderous events of the previous night.

  “So, Warren can do the face changing thing?”

  “The gross stuff. He didn’t seem to know about looking like someone else though.” I sipped my tea. “And I still don’t really see him as a murderer.”

  “Which is exactly why he’s perfect.”

  “Can you really see him killing someone?”

  Sabrina sighed. “Not really, but he’s our best suspect now.”

  “I suppose,” I said.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do I feel like there’s a lot more you’re not telling me?”

  I shrugged. “Because there’s a lot more I’m not telling you.”

  Sabrina placed her coffee back on the table and motioned to me. “Give it to me straight.”

  “Oz knows.”

  “Oh, is that all?” Sabrina’s shoulders relaxed as if she’d been expecting something much worse. “About what?”

  “No, he knows about everything.” I mimed a ball with my hands like that would somehow help explain.

  Sabrina picked her toast back up now she thought she had a handle on the news. “You mean about us investigating the murders?”

  “No. I mean—” I stretched my fingers out and swept my hands out across the table. “Everything.”

  The toast dropped back to Sabrina’s plate honey-side down and she didn’t even notice. Her mouth hung ajar and she stared at me, disbelief all over her face. “You told him?”

  “He didn’t exactly give me a choice.” I sipped my tea. “More disturbingly he didn’t look surprised by any of it, which means either he has a truly awesome poker face or he already knew. At least some of it.”

  Sabrina nodded, digesting the news. “How bad are we talking?”

  “Well, he’s not going to report me—”

  “You mean us?”

  “No, I mean me. No point dragging you down just because he’s got me bang to rights.” I shrugged. “But he is not happy with me at all.”

  “Can’t you just ply him with sexual favours or something? That usually works.” Sabrina picked her toast back up and used it to wipe up some honey from the plate.

  I adjusted my fringe again. It was becoming a nervous twitch. “I don’t really think that sexual favours are going to help the situation.”

  “They help every situation. Unless you’re doing them wrong.” She peered at me over her toast. “Are you doing them wrong? Do you need some advice? Wait. I keep forgetting you were with that drip so how would you know? I bet you never needed to bribe him.”

  “Because bribing your beloved indicates such a healthy relationship.” I sipped my tea.

  Sabrina winked at me. “It does if you do it right.”

  “Even then I don’t think it’s going to help this situation.”

  “Okay, so what does he know?”

  “He knows about Madame Zorina and how I help her out at lunch times. He knows about Edith. He knows about the clothes and makeup I recovered from The Trollop, whose name is Lulu by the way—”

  “Wow. So you really did tell him everything.” Sabrina sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “What’s he going to do?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea but I don’t think it’s going to involve tea and cake.” I tapped the table with my finger. “On the upside I did find out about this mysterious Katie. The one you couldn’t find any information on whatsoever?”

  Sabrina frowned at me. “Is it my imagination or was that a dig at my snooping competence?”

  “It has been nearly a week since we first found out about her,” I said with a shrug.

  “A secondhand, overheard, throwaway comment from Pete that mentioned a girl's first name and the fact he didn’t want us to end up like her isn't exactly a lot to go on.”

  I sipped some of my tea and then shrugged. “I have high expectations of you.”

  Sabrina gave me a flat stare. “Don’t flatter me. Just tell me what you know.”

  “Apparently she had a hard time adjusting. Like me. And she was assessed. Like me. And she failed—”

  Sabrina put her hand over my mouth. “Don’t say ‘like you’.”

  I took her hand away. “She was sent to a ‘readjustment facility’ and she didn’t make it through the process.”

  Sabrina frowned. “What do you mean? How could she not make it through? Like, she dropped out?”

  “Not exactly. The process was too much for her.”

  “Okay …” Sabrina drew the word out, narrowing her eyes at me. “What does that mean? Aren’t the programmes supposedly specifically designed for individuals?”

  I nodded. “Supposedly.”

  Sabrina placed her coffee cup on the table but didn’t let go of it. “Just tell me what happened.”

  “She became a poltergeist.”

  “Ohhhh. Is that all?” Sabrina slapped her hand over her heart and relaxed back in her chair. “So now she makes toasters fly around scaring the livies? That’s not so bad.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I said.” I nodded and sipped my tea.

  Sabrina re
ad my expression then placed one hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. “What? What do they do?”

  “They’re ghost serial killers.”

  Sabrina dropped her hand and her eyes stretched wide. “Shut the front door!”

  “Why?” Pete asked as he sat at our table. “Who left it open?”

  “Does it matter?” I asked him. “The murderer’s already in the house.”

  Pete looked up from his full English breakfast and Charlie paused in the middle of sitting down.

  “What did we interrupt?” Charlie asked.

  I waved my hand dismissively at them. “Oh. I was just telling Sabrina all about poltergeists and how I’m the first new ward Oz has had since his last one became a ghost serial killer because she had trouble adjusting. Something that you both knew and neglected to tell us.”

  “And why do you think we would know about this?" Pete asked, which I was taking for an admission that they did.

  “Remember when you were searching Fenton's apartment? You said you didn't want us to go the same way as Katie. Pretty sure that implies you knew.” I loaded up my tray. “I think I’m done with breakfast.”

  “Me too.” Sabrina didn’t even look at them as she loaded up her tray and followed me to the hatch. We dumped the trays and walked out, heading for the tunnelling room. “Do you want to go and check out the allotments since we’ve got some time before work?” Sabrina consulted her watch and I felt a small surge of envy. Why hadn’t I gotten my watch when retrieving my makeup and clothes?

  “Were you just party to the conversation where I told you that I’d had to tell Oz everything?”

  “Yeah, but now he thinks you’re fully chastised and you’ll behave so it’s really the best time to go.”

  “That’s appalling logic,” I said as I stood next to her on the small white tunnelling circle.

  Sabrina took my hand. “I don’t hear you saying no.”

  Before I could make any sort of lame comeback or excuse she’d tunnelled us to the allotments. The set up reminded me of the patchwork quilt from my bed. Each allotment was a different shape and size but all managed to fit into the oblong field. Several sheds were dotted around and at first I thought they were communal until I noticed they were attached to different plots and one had a no trespassing sign. I guessed all the gardeners didn’t get along. We wandered the narrow, grassy walkways that served as borders between each patch.