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

by Jordaina Sydney Robinson

  “What was that?” Sabrina appeared around the side of the rail, her eyes falling on Matthew. She threw her arms up at me. “Great. There goes our last suspect.”

  “Well, don’t look at me,” I said. “I didn’t kill him.”

  We both turned to Warren. “It wasn’t me!” he said.

  Sabrina examined the rails where he’d fallen through. “Someone must have trapped him between the two racks to keep his body hidden, using the tightly packed costumes to keep him upright.”

  I frowned at Sabrina. “You mean someone killed him, then picked him up and sandwiched him between those super heavy rails that are incredibly difficult to move? Are you kidding me right now?”

  “How is hiding him worse than him being dead?” asked Warren, his breathing returning to the shallow panic attack gasps from earlier.

  I pointed to Matthew. “Could you pick him up, hold him with one hand and then move those very heavy rails with the other hand? No, you couldn’t. But at least we know who the killer is now.”

  “Who?” Warren’s eyes darted around the room.

  I stared at him. “Quite obviously it’s Superman. Or Thor. Or The Rock.”

  Warren shook his head, confusion all over his face. “Why would The Rock want to kill Matthew?”

  I looked to Sabrina. “Help?”

  “I think we can rule all three out.” Sabrina held up two broken hangers. “I think he must have gotten hooked on the hangers somehow when he was attacked. When you shoved the clothes it must have knocked him loose.”

  “So, The Rock didn’t do it?” Warren asked, looking between us.

  “Did he have any wounds to his front?” Sabrina asked as she crouched over Matthew, examining his back and ignoring Warren.

  “Y’know, I was too busy trying to not let our prime murder suspect kill me to really look,” I said.

  Sabrina ignored my jibe and placed her hands underneath his side. “Help me roll him over?”

  Warren shook his head. “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no—”

  “She wasn’t talking to you.” I crouched next to her and we managed to heave his torso over. He rolled onto his back. Limp.

  “Stand on his hand.” Sabrina instructed me as she did the same on her side. “Your heel on his fingers and toes towards his wrist.”

  “What? Why?” I asked but did as she asked.

  “In case he’s lulling us into a false sense of security and he leaps up to try to kill us,” Sabrina said and I put all my weight on his hand.

  “What if he’s not dead?” Warren asked. “You might break something.”

  “Well, Warren, if he’s faking he’s likely the killer,” Sabrina said, using her oh-so-patient tone. “If he’s not faking then he really is dead so it won’t matter to him if we break something, will it?”

  “Good point.” Warren peered down at Matthew from behind me.

  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygod!” I shrieked and jumped back, throwing my arms up to protect my face.

  Pulling me out of the way when Matthew fell out from between the clothes rail must have been Warren’s one act of bravery for the day because he shrieked louder than I did and hid behind me, his hands fisted in my jumpsuit as if he were going to use me as a shield.

  When I stopped yelling and stilled, he peered out from behind me to see Matthew still prone on the floor.

  Sabrina grinned at him from across Matthew’s body. “I think that was better than stun gunning you.”

  Warren stepped out from behind me and pointed his finger at my face. “That was not funny.”

  “Ohhhh, I think it was.” I put my foot back on Matthew’s hand as Sabrina bent down to check for a pulse at his neck.

  Warren straightened out his jumpsuit and cracked his neck. “You’ve found too many dead bodies. It should bother you more than this.”

  “Yeah, you do get a little blasé about it all after a while,” I said.

  “Well, I can’t see any obvious injuries but he’s definitely dead.” Sabrina stood and motioned for me to remove my foot from Matthew’s hand.

  “Matthew? Are you in—” Tommy stood in the only doorway of the costume room and took in the scene.

  “What are you still doing here?” I asked, stepping over Matthew so Sabrina and I were side by side facing Warren and Tommy, using the doubly dead Matthew as a divider.

  Tommy stared at Matthew and sighed. “Is he dead?”

  “I thought you left with everyone else,” Sabrina said.

  Tommy moved out of the doorway, coming into the room and completely exposing his back to the only entrance. “There were some forms I’d not filled out properly. Matthew put me in one of the classrooms to complete them. He said this is where he’d be and to come and get him when I was done. Have you seen anyone else while you’ve been here?”

  “Which classroom?” Warren asked.

  “An upstairs one. He had all the paperwork set out ready.”

  Warren frowned. “Then how come I didn’t see you? I looked in every classroom.”

  Tommy shook his head and focused on Matthew’s body. “I don’t know. Why are you still here?”

  Warren shrugged. “I wanted to scare Bridget.”

  “Oh. Right.” Tommy raised an eyebrow at me and I gave him a long yeah-this-is-my-life blink. Tommy turned back to Warren. “How did that work out for you?”

  Warren rolled his eyes. “Not great. Have you seen anyone else?”

  Tommy nodded to Matthew. “You mean like someone with a badge saying, ‘I’m a murderer, ask me how’? No. How do we get out of here and call the police?”

  Warren looked at me since I was the expert. “They’re normally here by now, right? They don’t normally take this long, do they?”

  I shrugged. “Does anyone know how blocking works? Because if we can’t tunnel out, maybe they can’t tunnel in.”

  “I think those doors are our best bet. Let’s get outside and deal with it there,” Sabrina said.

  Warren’s voice hitched up. “We just found a dead guy. Why do you think I’d go anywhere with you?”

  “I thought you knew it wasn't me?” I said.

  “I did. Until we found a dead Matthew!” Warren jabbed his finger at the latest dead body.

  I folded my arms and stared at him. “Right, because there couldn’t possibly be anyone else running around the building brandishing a log.”

  “I think we should all stick together,” Tommy interrupted.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you either,” Warren said, stepping back from Tommy.

  “So don’t go with any of us,” I said. “But don’t blame us when the murderer picks you off as the straggler.”

  Warren glanced between the three of us. “Fine. I’ll come. But you better keep your distance.”

  “Oh great. I'm so pleased,” Sabrina snipped. “Bridge and I are going back to the doors in the reception area. So if you can both …” Sabrina stretched out her arms and wafted them forward, implying for them to exit the costume room.

  Tommy grinned. “You don’t want to walk past me?”

  “No offence. But I don’t know you and we’ve just found a dead body. I’m not turning my back on either of you.” Sabrina held up her empty hands like she was surrendering before casually returning them to her pockets. Tommy watched them, his attention focusing a little longer on her stun gun pocket.

  Warren followed, stepping sideways, and we brought up the rear. Once out of the assembly hall we stood on opposite sides of the corridor. Boys versus girls.

  “What are you two going to do?” Sabrina asked.

  Tommy glanced along the corridor to the reception area. “I’m pretty sure they’re going to be reinforced glass so I’ll look around upstairs for an alternative option.”

  “I’m going to stay right here.” Warren pointed to the floor. “You can shout to me when you—”

  “Shhh.” Tommy narrowed his eyes at the open stairway. Sure enough, a tapping that could’ve been two pairs of feet echoed in the silence.r />
  “Oh, thank goodness, we’re not alone in here,” Nancy said as she and Hannah emerged from the wide stairway and walked towards us. “Do you know why we’re locked in here?”

  Tommy, Warren, Sabrina, and I all exchanged glances. Everyone’s expression said the same thing: promising new suspects.

  “I thought you two left,” Sabrina said.

  “I needed to speak to Matthew about the assessment so we popped back.” Hannah looked behind us as she spoke as if expecting Matthew to come through the doors.

  “What about the assessment?” Tommy didn’t do anything as obvious as point his finger and accuse them, but his suspicion was clear from his tone.

  “It’s confidential,” Hannah apologised with a smile.

  “More like personal,” I mumbled.

  Hannah frowned at me. “Either way, he was too busy telling you two off about something in the costume room so I left you to it and figured I’d try again later.”

  Sabrina and I exchanged a glance as Tommy’s and Warren’s eyes fell on us.

  “Did you actually see us both in there?” Sabrina asked.

  Hannah hesitated. “Well, no. I didn’t go in. I heard it through the door. I just assumed it was you two. Why?”

  “We haven’t seen Matthew since he left us in the costume room tidying up after everyone else,” I said.

  “Not alive at least,” Sabrina added.

  “What do you mean?” Hannah’s attention jumped between Sabrina and me, her voice climbing an octave. “Not alive?”

  “He’s dead,” Warren said with absolutely no attempt at tact.

  Hannah’s eyes stretched wide and she let out a wail that crazy Jessica would’ve been proud of. She dropped to the floor, curling in on herself, and cried out huge, gut-wrenching sobs. Nancy sat down next to her and tried to comfort her while the rest of us stood around, not really knowing where to look.

  “We still need a way out of here,” Sabrina said in a low voice so not to disturb Hannah’s crying fit.

  Warren folded his arms and stared at us. “Yeah, the murderer would say that.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Tommy said and clipped Warren upside the back of his head with an open palm.

  I pointed to Tommy. “If you’re the murderer it will break my heart.”

  Tommy threw me a wink. “Same plan? I go upstairs, you two check the front?”

  “No, no, we shouldn’t split up.” Nancy spoke over Hannah’s sobbing. “Remember the forest?”

  Tommy, Sabrina, and I shared a glance, then all continued on our way, leaving Warren with Nancy and Hannah. Tommy headed up the staircase, taking two steps at a time, and Sabrina and I made our way to the reception area. We stood in front of the doors and Sabrina checked over her shoulder at the still-crying Hannah at the other end of the corridor while I picked up the coffee table.

  “I think Tommy’s right.” I tapped the glass door with the table leg. “I’m not sure this is going to break it.”

  “Yeah,” Sabrina agreed a little more loudly than necessary. “Let’s see if there’s anything else we can use.”

  Sabrina moved to the left, between the wall and the reception desk, out of sight of the corridor and Warren. She beckoned me with a finger pressed to her lips. Sabrina pointed at a narrow hallway leading away from the reception area in the opposite direction of the corridor. There were two locked doors at the end of it. One that led straight ahead and one on the back wall of the reception area. I peeked around the corner, back up the corridor, while Sabrina picked the lock on the door straight ahead at the end of the hallway.

  She looked inside then turned back to me with a shake of her head. “Stationery closet.”

  She closed it without locking it and picked the lock on the door on the back wall of the reception area. It led into the last classroom before the reception area. We moved inside and this time Sabrina used her tools to lock the door after us.

  “I saw these doors last time we were down here,” Sabrina said quietly. “Admittedly, I thought they might lead somewhere better.”

  “I did wonder why you announced we’d be going back to the reception area,” I whispered. “I thought it was uncharacteristically trusting of you. What’s the plan from here?”

  “I was hoping there would be windows in here and they’d be easier to break than the reception doors but …” Sabrina pointed through the single-pane windows to the large courtyard enclosed by the other school buildings. “Why is that even there? What’s its purpose?”

  “It’s a garden. I don’t ever remember being allowed to go in it, though.”

  “Do you think the blocking covers it?”

  I shook my head. “I’ve no idea. Maybe because it’s in the centre of the building. Maybe not because it’s not actually part of the building. Want to break a window and try?”

  Sabrina frowned out at the small garden as she backed up against the wall of the classroom that bordered the corridor. “Maybe keep it in mind as a possibility.”

  “Ah, right,” I said with a nod, following her across the room. “Because we’re so inundated with much better avenues of escape right now.”

  Sabrina pointed to the half-glass door several feet further along the wall. “We should be able to see who comes for us without them seeing us if we keep close to this wall.”

  “So, this ‘let’s split up and find an exit’ plan was really a ‘let’s split up and see who comes to kill us’ plan?”

  Sabrina offered me a one-shoulder shrug. “Maybe.”

  I shook my head at her. “How are you not being assessed?”

  Sabrina grinned and then pressed her finger to her lips and pointed to the door. I peeked out from over her shoulder to see a diagonal slice of the corridor and something Alex Version 2.0 had said floated through my mind. I grabbed Sabrina’s arm as something occurred to me.

  Sabrina saw my expression and her eyes darted around the room. “What?”

  I built a vision of the ladies’ locker room in my mind and tilted my head to either side trying to work out the angle. “You can’t see my locker from the toilets.”

  Sabrina stared at me for a long moment, then patted my hand that still gripped her arm. “That’s good to know.”

  “If you can’t see my locker from the toilets then how could Alex Version 2.0 see me stuff someone inside it?”

  Sabrina closed her eyes and angled her head. “Your locker is on the right, right? Same side as the toilets and there’s a wall between them.” Sabrina tilted her head in the opposite direction much like I had done. “You should be able to see some of the opposite side of the room, though.”

  “Exactly. So Alex Version 2.0 couldn’t have seen me actually stuff someone in my locker.”

  “Ohhhhh …” Sabrina’s eyes darted around the room again, this time as if she were watching something on a television screen. “Ohhhhh-ho …”

  I sighed. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Sabrina’s eyes focused on my face. “What if he just saw one person? What if Watson was already dead and the murderer morphed into both you and her? He said you just laughed, right?” she asked and I nodded. “No one’s laugh sounds like their speaking voice, so he wouldn’t know that wasn’t you and maybe he’d never heard Watson talk. Or they could do a decent impersonation.”

  Charon’s uncanny take on Watson popped into my head. No. It wouldn’t be Charon. He wouldn’t kill someone. Would he? Well, yeah, he might, but he wouldn’t frame me for it. I knew that for sure. Mostly for sure.

  I sneaked a peek into the corridor through the glass panes in the door to see if our friendly neighbourhood murderer had shown their face yet. They hadn’t. “Okay, let’s assume it was one person – how does that get us any closer to the killer?”

  “It doesn’t. Not really.” Sabrina frowned at the far wall. “Okay. Let’s work this through. The only reason to put on a show would be if you knew someone was watching. That would mean the killer waited for Alex Version 2.0 to go into the ladies�
� locker room so they could give him a fake murder show framing you.”

  “Two huge problems with that.” I counted them off on my fingers. “First, they would have to know that Alex Version 2.0 uses the ladies’ toilets and, second, they would be hanging around outside with a dead Watson slumped over their shoulder.”

  “Those are both very valid points.” Sabrina nodded but still stared at the far wall. “Unless the body was stuffed in there earlier and the killer was just waiting around for someone to come in. Maybe they didn’t know Alex Version 2.0 used the ladies’ toilets, maybe they were just waiting for someone, anyone, to be a witness.” Sabrina nodded to herself. “Yeah, that would work. They’d put on a show right before you were due to finish your community service shift, which leaves you with a small but possible murdering window.”

  “That would mean it was someone who knew what time I’d finish. And wouldn’t the GBs have shown up when Watson was originally murdered?”

  Sabrina was too busy tapping her chin and staring at the wall to hear me. “But who in here has enough ghost juice to switch back and forth into two people? Maybe there are two killers. I’m not happy about Nancy and Hannah just showing up,” Sabrina said with a shake of her head.

  “Well, it can’t be Hannah because she didn’t start subbing until after Gracie was stabbed,” I said. “Or, at least, she can’t be the one who killed Gracie. Maybe she killed everyone else and Nancy killed Gracie. Or maybe it’s all Nancy. But during ‘murder in the dark’ how would they have known where I was to slap the knife into my hand?”

  “Night vision goggles?” Sabrina suggested.

  I gave her a flat stare. “I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed someone walking around with a pair of those.”

  Sabrina inclined her head. “Fair point. And who did Hannah hear Matthew arguing with in the costume room?”