And I was supposed to get on with the day sans caffeine? Hopeful that the coffee maker was hidden somewhere and Leo hadn’t found it, I dared to peek in one of the cupboards, spied a nest, and let it slam shut again.
“The exterminator’s already been contacted,” Leo offered. “He’ll be here at nine.”
I didn’t really want to know but had to ask. “What exactly will he be exterminating?”
“Oh, the usual. Mice, bugs.” A pause and Leo cleared his throat as though it were a backed-up drain and tagged on, “Snakes.”
Oh hell no. “Snakes? Did you just say snakes?”
“They aren’t poisonous,” Leo said a touch defensively, as though I’d insulted his cheddar soufflé recipe. “And they eat the mice.”
“So what, they’ll be our mascots? Nuh uh, no frigging way, Leo. Mice and bugs are one thing, and I can even deal with the ghost, but no way in hell am I staying in a place that’s infested with snakes.” My voice turned shrill.
Neil joined us and I fought the urge to climb his tall frame like a tree. Could snakes climb trees? Lord, I hoped I wouldn’t have to find out.
“Maggie, are you all right?” Sylvia appeared, fresh as a daisy and calm as could be.
“I don’t know.” I felt dizzy and leaned against the counter.
“She’s deathly afraid of snakes.” Neil put a hand out to steady me.
Leo snorted. “I would never have guessed.”
“It means she was bitten by a snake in a past life,” our spiritual guidebook offered. “Maybe even died from a venomous bite.”
“Really?” Leo looked interested. “So, what does it mean if I don’t like turtlenecks?”
“That you have taste,” I muttered. They all ignored me except for Atlas, who gave my hand a lick of greeting.
“You were probably hanged in a past life,” Sylvia offered.
I swayed and Neil pulled me fully against him before he addressed the gruesome twosome. “This 1,000 ways to die conversation is so not helping her.”
Leo looked ashamed. “The snakes aren’t in the house. Just around it. Besides, they’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”
Somehow I doubted it.
“How about Maggie and I go pick up breakfast?” Neil rode to the rescue with his customary heroic timing. “Where’s this diner?”
Leo gave us directions and they both put in their orders for food. A cheddar and bacon omelet with dry wheat toast for Leo, steel-cut oatmeal and green tea, if they had any, for Sylvia.
My head swam as we stepped out onto the path that led to the truck. Neil guided me, his touch concerned but distant, like he was helping an old lady across the street. Frigging Boy Scout. I was too busy scanning the walkway for snakes to come up with something to say.
As soon as we climbed into the truck, I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. He turned the engine over and said, “Buckle your seatbelt.”
I did, still in search of the right words. Maybe the bean nighe had absconded with them during the night. If they’d ever actually existed.
The diner was about three miles up the road from the estate and easy to spot. The town itself consisted of the Wayward Son diner, a gas station/garage, a small non-chain grocery store, a post office and a library/town hall/historical society/courthouse.
Neil parked the truck besides a rusted-out Ford and a battered station wagon. I opened my mouth, still not sure what to say to him. I had to say something, but he exited the truck and shut the door, a clear sign of a man who was in no mood to talk.
I flipped down the visor and did my best to contain the rat’s nest of my hair. My jeans were bleach stained, my flannel shirt thin, but I was presentable enough as long I didn’t stand between Leo and Sylvia. Neil looked like a surly mountain man, with rough salt and pepper beard stubble on his chin and his dark hair unkempt. Obviously, he hadn’t gotten any more sleep than me. I’d half expected him to walk into the diner but he waited for me by the front of the truck, intentionally not looking in my direction.
It’s probably better this way, I told myself as I slithered down out of the truck. I needed coffee to be coherent, massive doses of it after the fitful night, although the snake scare was enough to get my heart up to its usual speed. Another shudder ripped through me.
“Do you want to eat here?” Neil asked without looking at me.
I considered it. Maybe we could dawdle at the diner, sit down over our own breakfast and then I’d just stay in the truck until the exterminator came and did his thing. No, that was selfish, to leave Leo and Sylvia with the burden of the work and hungry while we lingered over coffee. I might be none too proud of my recent actions, but I hadn’t changed that much.
“Let’s get it all to go. We have some planning to do.”
We sat at the counter and sipped coffee while the food was cooking. I took in our surroundings, surprised and pleased by the hidden gem. The diner was small but neat and packed full to overflowing.
“You must be the new owners of the old lock house,” a heavily accented German voice said. “I thought Alex said you were older?”
I looked up into a friendly weather-beaten face. He was as tough as old leather, cracked and creased with age, but sturdy. He wore a gleaming white apron and carried two plastic bags stuffed full with Styrofoam containers.
“It’s my parents’ place. We’re just here to help spruce it up a bit. Neil Phillips. This is my wife, Maggie.” Neil offered his hand.
“Gustav Shempsky. This is my place.” The German man gripped it and shook heartily. “Hey, Alex, come meet your new neighbors.”
A pretty woman with dark hair poked her head out of the kitchen. “I’ll burn everyone’s breakfast if I do. Unless you want to take over the grill, Gus?”
“Not on your life.” Gustav winked at her. “I’m retired.”
“Then you should find something better to do than loll around here all day.” Alex smiled to take the barb out of her words.
I liked her immediately and it would be nice to have a few inside sources to help us get the lay of the land. With any luck she’d have a few stories about the bean nighe. “Maybe we can talk later? We can drop by when you’re not so busy.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Alex tapped the small service bell as she put a plate on the counter. “Order up!”
The order happened to be ours. I drained my coffee, picked up two containers and followed Neil back out to the truck.
The coffee in my belly, plus the carry out tray scented with the promise of more to come, emboldened me. “Where did you sleep last night?”
“I didn’t.” He put the key in the ignition but didn’t start the truck. “I just sat down by the river until the sun came up.”
I pictured it, him sitting straight backed, his gaze trained out on the rushing water. The sun slowly caressing his dark hair as he waited for inspiration.
I sighed. “Neither did I. Neil—”
“Not now.” His tone was firm and unyielding. He started the truck and we drove back to the estate in silence.
****
Harsh daylight revealed all the flaws that the darkness had hidden. The place was pretty in an old-fashioned farm sort of way. Log cabin exterior to the main house. The windows glinted in the bright morning sunshine. There were two outbuildings, what looked like an abandoned barn, plus a large carriage house with white peeling paint and a half caved-in roof. The entire property had definitely seen better days.
And would again if we succeeded.
“Any sign of the ghost last night?” I asked Neil as we carried the food up to the house, my eyes trained for any telltale rustling in the overgrown lawn.
“No.” He was monosyllabically grim, but definite.
Leo greeted us at the front door. “Did you meet Gustav?” he asked as he took the food and set it out on the folding card table he’d erected in the living room.
I plopped into a folding chair. “Yes, and the cook too. I guess she lives nearby?”
Leo check
ed the contents of one container and pushed it toward Sylvia before he grabbed another. “That must be Alex Ruiz. I haven’t met her yet, but I heard she’s married to the sheriff. I ran into him at the town hall after the closing. Nice guy, not what I was expecting in this place.”
“How’s that?” Sylvia dunked her tea bag in the hot water.
“Well first off, he’s Latino. Don’t see too many minorities around here. According to the postmistress, he used to work for the National Park Service but then switched to the local municipality.”
“You work fast, all plugged into the local gossip mill already,” I remarked as I cut into my fluffy stack of pancakes. I refused to feel guilty about the mass quantities of carbs I intended to devour. The maple syrup provided by the diner was fresh and light and absolutely delicious. Proof that small towns’ lack of diversity didn’t mean lack of quality.
“Time is money,” Leo snapped in a believable imitation of Laura’s upper crust Bostonian accent.
I laughed and looked to Neil, surprised to find that he stared back at me. A small smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. The second our eyes met he glanced away and my heart sank.
Not now, he’d said. I’d wanted to ask when but like a true chicken, had kept quiet. Was it fair of me to demand a conversation, or anything else, of him? I still didn’t know why I’d lied about the dog. Atlas lay under the table, his drool forming a little puddle on my sneaker, so it wasn’t as though it had gotten me anywhere. Had I done it just to put some distance between myself and Neil?
Okay, so I was completely neurotic and the baby conversation had freaked me out. It was well within the realm of irrational possibility that my brain had decided fibbing in such an obvious way would help me reclaim the much needed control I sought.
But at what cost? I longed to have Neil touch me, pull me against him and call me Uncle Scrooge. I missed him even though he was right there across the table. It felt as if he were further away than the times he’d been deployed.
“What do you think, Maggie?” Sylvia asked.
With a start, I realized the conversation about the property had continued without me.
“Sounds like a plan.” I had no idea what I’d just agreed to. As long as it didn’t involve snakes, I’d manage.
A car door slammed and Neil rose to peer out the window. “I think that’s your exterminator.”
“Fabulous.” Leo scurried off to greet him.
“Should we take my car?” Sylvia asked.
“You know where we’re going, right?” I figured one of us should.
“I may need the truck anyway,” Neil added, and the decision was made.
Joy, rapture. More deep breathing lessons by a guy who may or may not make obscene phone calls in his spare time.
“Let me just run and grab my purse.” Sylvia darted for the stairs, leaving me alone with two hundred pounds of irritated husband.
“What did I agree to?” I asked him bluntly.
He shook his head. “I knew you were zoning out.”
I took a step closer and reached a hand for his. “That’s because you know me better than I know myself. And you love me anyway.”
His expression softened. “I do. And you’re tearing my heart out.”
I flinched, but didn’t look away. Instead, I forced myself to witness the truth of his pain. I wanted to beg him to be patient with me, but did I even have the right to ask it of him?
His hand squeezed mine. “Talk to me, Uncle Scrooge.”
I swallowed hard. “I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Here? Or life in general?”
“Take your pick.”
We sat in silence for a time, just being together, listening to the steady churning of the river.
Finally, after an endless moment, he pulled me into his arms and sighed into my hair. “It’s not required. To know what you’re doing all the time.”
I made a very unfeminine snort. “You do.”
“Do not,” he shot back
“Well, you fake it like a pro.”
He laughed at that, a real laugh, the kind that made me believe in forever. Such undiluted joy was meant to be, wasn’t it?
“If you really believe that, Uncle Scrooge, I’ve got you completely fooled.”
Chapter Seven
The mystery errand I’d agreed to was a trip to the town library to learn more about our property and the surrounding town. Leo had already collected a good bit of info about the house itself and a few rumors on the ghost, but my partner in crime decided to dig deeper. An hour later I was up to my ears in dusty old books and moldering pages.
I sneezed for the bazillionth time and glared at Sylvia, who sat serenely across the table as she scanned microfiche. “I don’t even know what the hell I’m looking for.”
“Anything that jumps out at you.” She didn’t look up but clicked to the next slide.
“That clears things right up.” I blew my nose and turned another page.
The town had originally been a colonial logging settlement before the Revolutionary War. A semi-major battle, the battle of Minisink Ford, had taken place in the county in 1779. It had been a decidedly British victory, thanks in large part to the Iroquois, who suffered for it later when the continental army wiped out every Iroquois village they came across during the Sullivan-Clinton Expedition.
It hadn’t been a large battle, but for the colonists it had been a demoralizing one. The remains of the fallen lay unburied on the hillside as the area was considered too dangerous to traverse. In 1822 a committee sent people to comb the battlefield for remains, which were buried in a mass grave. Though I doubted that had anything to do with our particular ghost, I could imagine that if ghosts were real, there had been several on that hillside, waiting to be moved to their final resting place.
I took copious notes, shut the book and stretched my stiff back muscles. “I don’t think we’re going to find much here.”
Sylvia leaned back in her chair, knitted her fingers together and reached them up over her head. “Do you have any better ideas?”
In fact, I did. “The bean nighe is a Celtic harbinger of death. The fact that she’s called by that name means someone recognized her for what she was, via oral tradition. Ghost stories were told around a hearth fire in the old country. What we need is to find people of either Irish or Scottish decent, preferably people who’ve lived in the area for the last half century, and ask them about her.”
And hope they tell us something. I didn’t say that part out loud, but Scots in particular could be stingy about giving information to those outside their clan or family. Particularly when the information would impact their way of life. Somehow I doubted there were any McIntyres nearby to welcome me like a long lost niece and give up the deets on our ghost.
We reshelved the books, thanked the librarian and made our way across the street to the Wayward Son. To glean local insight we needed local perspective, and Alex Ruiz was the closest thing I had to an inside man.
Plus, I wanted her pancake recipe.
The place was empty except for a stoop-shouldered youth with a nose piercing bussing tables. Alex sat at the counter, a phone pressed to her ear. She waved and indicated the empty tables in a universal take your pick gesture. We seated ourselves at the booth nearest the counter and waited for her to finish whatever she was about.
“So, what’s wrong with you and Neil?” Sylvia asked bluntly.
One eyebrow rose nearly to my hairline. “Who says anything’s wrong?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face.”
“Really?” Dismayed by the news, I touched the aforementioned nose.
“At least to the people who know you. Leo and I discussed it when you left to get breakfast. He said he hadn’t seen the two of you so at odds since you first met.”
I winced, partially at the idea of my two friends gossiping about my marriage but mostly because I remembered how at odds Neil and I had been back then
. Him coming off a rocky divorce and enduring flashbacks of horrors he’d witnessed in the line of duty. Me with shreds of my tattered pride wrapped around myself in a flimsy shield, a broken heart and barely a penny to my name. An attraction neither of us knew what to do about and two little boys caught in the middle of the mess. We’d saved each other, come together, made a family built on love and respect.
And my zany antics were destroying it all, stone by stone.
I offered the lame excuse that people have leaned on since the dawn of time to weasel out of laying their cards flat on the table. “It’s complicated.”
“I am a certified life coach.” She tossed her braid over her shoulder.
I drummed my fingertips on the table. Maybe talking things out with Sylvia would help. Hell, at the very least it couldn’t make things worse.
Before I could get into it though, Alex approached, three mugs and a coffee pot in hand. “I was hoping you’d come back. Coffee?”
Though Sylvia waved away the offered java, the monkey on my back leapt with joy. “Your blend is delicious.”
Alex grinned. “Thanks. It’s a dark Columbian brew I got on wholesale. It’s not exactly Starbucks, which would never fly in a place like this anyway, but I do what I can to enlighten the local palates.”
“So, you’re a native then?” Sylvia asked casually.
“Born and bred. Though don’t let that fool you into thinking I’m some sort of backwoods rube.” From the flash in her eyes, I gathered someone had made that mistake before.
“Never crossed our minds,” I told her honestly. “Besides, I’m the last person to cast stones, being something of an introvert myself.”
Sylvia snorted and I kicked her under the table as subtly as possible.
Luckily, Alex was distracted when the bell over the diner door chimed and a handsome man appeared. From his dark complexion, uniform and the way her face lit up when she saw him, I guessed he was Sheriff Sam Ruiz, Alex’s husband.
The Misadventures of the Laundry Hag: All Washed Up: (Book 3 in the Misadventures of the Laundry Hag series) Page 6