“SO, DO YOU WANT A DIVORCE?” Claudia asked as she and Walt stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of Marlow House.
“If we are married as you say, either a divorce or an annulment. Preferably an annulment.”
“That’s fine if you want an annulment, but I still expect a generous settlement.”
“What do you see as generous?” he asked.
“I want half of everything you have—including half of whatever you make on Moon Runners in the future. After all, you wrote that book while we were married. Community property and all…”
Walt chuckled. “I thought you didn’t believe I wrote the book?”
Claudia shrugged. “It doesn’t matter what I believe.”
The two continued to walk down the street toward the pier.
“I’ll let our attorneys work that out.”
Claudia stopped abruptly. “What attorneys?”
Walt stopped and looked at her. They stood in front of Pearl’s house on the sidewalk.
“Naturally I’ll turn this over to my attorney.”
Claudia shook her head. “No. That is not the deal. We don’t need attorneys!” she said angrily.
“Exactly how did you see us handling this?” Walt asked.
“There is no reason to get attorneys involved, and this way your fiancée never has to know she was engaged to a married man. You simply write me a check for half of what you have now.”
“Oh really?” Walt laughed. He started back down the street.
“Don’t laugh at me!” Claudia shrieked, running to catch up with Walt.
“Your suggestion is laughable; how can I not laugh? What happens, I give you half of everything I have, and then you decide you want to stay married to me?”
“No. If you would just listen to me. I will take care of the divorce and send you the papers to sign. And once it’s official, you finalize the papers to ensure I get half of all future revenues from the book. So, see, if I fail to come through with the divorce, then I don’t get half of the future revenues.”
Walt laughed again. He paused and turned to Claudia. “But you would still be my wife, so I’m not sure how I’m protected.”
“You have to trust me,” she insisted.
“I don’t even know you.”
They started walking again.
“Clint, this will be—”
“I go by Walt now. Don’t call me Clint,” he snapped.
“Okay, Walt. This will save us money. Attorneys are expensive. They are the only ones who make anything in a divorce settlement,” Claudia insisted.
“Considering you and I obviously never lived together, I don’t imagine I will end up owing you much of anything—maybe nothing at all.”
“You’re wrong. Because if you don’t agree to the divorce under my terms, then I’m going to the police and turning over what I have on you. Who knows, maybe when they send you to prison, I’ll end up with all your money. You won’t need it when you’re behind bars for the next twenty years. Of course, you can always write another book when you get out.”
TWENTY-SIX
Chris popped two aspirins in his mouth as he drove the rental car to Huntington Beach. Grabbing the open bottle of water from the cup holder, he washed them down. Heather had made the appointments for him. First, he was meeting with a real estate agent from Claudia’s office, and then four hours later, he would be seeing a second agent from Clint’s old office. He felt a little guilty for taking the agents’ time when he wasn’t in the market for real estate. To assuage his guilt, each appointment was taking place at an upscale restaurant, where he would be picking up the tab. The first would be for lunch and the second meeting an early dinner. He had to eat anyway, so it seemed like a sensible thing to do.
Twenty minutes later Chris sat in a restaurant overlooking the ocean. He wasn’t there long when an attractive thirtysomething professionally dressed woman was brought to the table. Chris stood up when she approached.
“Mr. Johnson?” she asked hesitantly.
Chris took her hand. “Yes, and you are Ms. Stockwell?”
“Yes, nice to meet you,” she said while shaking hands. “But please, call me Jenny.”
“And you can call me Chris,” he told her as she took a seat at the table.
She flashed him a smile and then asked, “I hope you had a pleasant flight from Oregon.”
“It was uneventful.”
“That’s always good.” She grinned.
“But I must say, I forgot how crowded it is down here.”
“True. But you can’t beat that view.” With her right hand she motioned toward the window.
“It is a lovely view.” He wasn’t going to argue and inform her his ocean view from his back patio at home was far more impressive—and far less people. Instead he said, “If you don’t mind, before we get to my real estate questions, perhaps we might chat a little—get to know each other while we have lunch. I always feel more comfortable doing business with someone I know something about—plus, I’m starved. I missed breakfast.”
“Why certainly!”
A few minutes later after ordering drinks and looking over the menu, Jenny said, “The woman I talked to—I think she said her name was Heather Donovan—tells me you’re out scouting for properties on behalf of the Glandon Foundation?”
Chris nodded. “That’s true.”
“I confess, after she called, I looked up the Glandon Foundation. Rather impressive the philanthropic work you do.”
“It’s not me—I just work for the organization. But I have to say, I am proud of what they have accomplished.”
A few minutes later the server took their order. As they chatted, waiting for their food to arrive, Chris ordered Jenny another cocktail. As she finished her second drink, he thought he might need to call her a cab to take her back to her office. She seemed a little tipsy. While he never intended to get her inebriated—hardly a gentlemanly thing to do—he thought it might be a good time to pump her for information.
“By the way, I have a friend who knows someone who works with you.”
“Really? Who is that?”
“Claudia Dane.”
“No kidding? I’ve known Claudia for years. We started at the same real estate office. How does your friend know her?”
“Claudia’s staying at her B and B right now. When I told my friend what real estate office I was talking to, she mentioned one of her guests was an agent there.”
“Did you say your friend owns a B and B?”
“Yes.”
“Surely you don’t mean Marlow House?” Jenny asked.
Chris feigned innocence. “You’ve heard of it?”
“Why yes. You don’t know Clint Marlow, do you?”
“Yes. Do you?”
“Oh my god, what a small world!” Jenny laughed. “I read all about what happened to Clint. Do you know if he still has amnesia?”
“He does. Were you good friends?”
“Not really. But I’ve known him for years. He started at the same office Claudia and I started with.”
“Were Claudia and Clint close?” Chris asked.
“They used to be real estate partners. Quite the power team. But then they each went off on their own and ended up in different offices.”
“Why did they break up their team if they were—a power team—as you describe?” Chris asked.
Jenny shrugged. “I have no idea. One spring they went to Mexico together, and when they came back, their partnership was over.”
“What happened in Mexico?” Chris asked.
“Not a clue. Just between you and me, sometimes I got the feeling they were—you know, more than just a real estate team. Especially when they took that trip to Mexico—just the two of them. But it obviously didn’t work out.”
“Did they remain friends?”
“I suppose they did. They certainly did a ton of real estate deals together afterwards. Hmm…maybe that’s why she’s up there. Now that Stephanie’s gone, maybe
she thinks she has a second shot at him.”
“Clint—or Walt as he goes by now—he’s engaged to my friend.”
“I did read about that too.” Jenny took another sip of her drink.
“When you said they did a ton of real estate deals together, what did you mean? I thought they stopped being a team?”
“They weren’t a team anymore. But Claudia started flipping properties. She did pretty good at it for a while. That girl had a knack of picking up a house dirt cheap, throwing some paint on it, and then turning around and making a hefty profit. To be honest, I thought her listings were way overpriced. I was always shocked that she typically got what she asked.”
“And what was Clint’s part in this?”
“He brought the buyers.”
BACK AT MARLOW HOUSE, Eva, like Marie, had been given a reprieve from her duties as ghostly snoop. Tanya had taken the car for a drive to Astoria, leaving her husband at Marlow House alone. He insisted the pain in his lower back was just too severe to sit in a car for any length of time.
“Do you have any aspirin?” Dirk asked Danielle when he found her in the kitchen.
“Yes, there’s some in the downstairs bathroom medicine cabinet. Help yourself.”
“Thank you. Where is everyone, by the way?”
“Rachel drove into town to see a movie.”
“Alone?”
Danielle shrugged. “Unless she knows someone in Frederickport she hasn’t told us about. Claudia went for a walk.”
“Where’s Walt? I want to talk to him. Seems like I keep missing him. I thought maybe if I tell him some stories about work, it might help him regain his memory.”
“Walt had some errands to run. I don’t know when he’ll be back,” she lied.
“I’ll just have to catch him when I come back.” He turned and headed for the door, his hand on his lower back as he hunched over.
“Are you okay?” Danielle asked.
Dirk paused a moment and turned to face Danielle. “I have back issues. The medication I use normally knocks out the pain.”
“If you’re out, maybe you can get a refill at the pharmacy?” Danielle suggested.
Dirk shook his head. “I’m not out of it. But I had a bad reaction to it yesterday, so until my doctor can give me something else, I’ll just have to make do with something over the counter.”
Danielle cringed. “Oh…I hope it wasn’t too bad. Had a friend once whose face about doubled in size after an allergic reaction to medication.”
“In my case it was flying around your library.”
“Excuse me?”
Dirk chuckled. “Yesterday when I was in the library alone, sitting on one of your chairs, I thought the chair took flight. My head about touched the ceiling. Or so I thought at the time. I confess it had me pretty freaked out, but then I realized it was a hallucination, and either I was going crazy—or there was a logical explanation. There was. A reaction to my medication.”
After Dirk stepped out of the room and headed to the downstairs bathroom, Danielle shook her head and said under her breath, “Marie failed to mention someone was sitting in the chair when she was practicing her levitation skills.”
AFTER TAKING TWO ASPIRIN, Dirk headed to the library. He hadn’t been back since his little episode. Stepping into the room, he looked at the chair he had been sitting in when it took flight—or so he thought at the time. With a frown, he noticed the chair sat lopsided. Glancing down at its legs, he immediately knew why. One of them was snapped in half. A chill went up his spine.
He stared at the chair and then slowly approached, his focus on its legs. Kneeling down in front of it, he looked at the wood floor and noticed several dents along the planks. Leaning over, cringing a bit as pain shot up his spine, he rubbed his palm against the floor and over the indentations. Moving the chair slightly, he noticed the dents lined up perfectly with the chair legs—with the deepest dent lining up where the broken leg would have landed. It was as if the chair had been dropped down from the ceiling, breaking a leg on impact.
Shaking his head at the thought, he stood back up, struggling a bit to get upright again.
“I need to get this settled with Clint and then get the hell out of this place before I start believing this really is a haunted house.”
Determined to put some space between himself and Marlow House so he could clear his head, he decided a walk to the pier might be what he needed. Walking sometimes helped alleviate the pain in his back, whereas sitting acerbated the problem. Leaving the library, he headed toward the front door, grabbing his jacket from the coatrack along the way.
ALBERT HANSON SAT at the counter and waited for the server to bring his food. It was the same woman who had waited on him the last time he had been at the café. He watched as she pulled the plate with the burger and fries from the pass-through window and headed his way. A moment later she set the plate before him.
“Can I get you anything else?” she asked.
“No, this looks good.” He picked up his napkin and put it on his lap. He looked at her name tag. She hadn’t been wearing one the other day. It said Carla.
Lingering on the other side of the counter, Carla twirled a lock of her blue hair around one finger and said, “You were sure upset the other day.”
“Yeah. Well, sorry about that.” He took a bite of his burger.
“Something happen between you and Clint Marlow? I assumed that was the Marlow you were talking about,” Carla asked.
“Let’s just say Clint Marlow is nothing but a scam artist and crook.”
“Clint Marlow, he was the reason you were so interested in Marlow House the other day, wasn’t he?”
“I heard he was staying there.”
“You know, he has amnesia. He can’t remember anything about his life when he was Clint,” Carla told him.
Albert looked up from his burger. “Do you really believe that?”
Carla shrugged. “I guess. I know he seemed kind of sleazy when I first met him. But I think he’s changed. Are you here to see him? Is that why you’re here?”
“I wanted to talk to him. Yes. But I don’t know if I will. What good will it do if he really can’t remember anything?”
“If you want to talk to him, maybe now is your chance. Right before I came in here, I saw him walking down the pier, talking to that lady. You know, the one you got upset with when you were here the last time.”
“They were together?”
“Yeah.”
Albert dropped his burger on the plate, stood up abruptly, and then jerked his wallet from his back pocket. From the wallet he pulled out a twenty and slammed the bill on the counter. “This should cover it.”
Carla watched as Albert rushed from the diner while attempting to shove his wallet in his back pocket. But in his haste, the wallet dropped on the floor.
“Wait!” Carla called out from behind the counter. Ignoring her cry, Albert disappeared out the door. Carla hurried around the counter and picked up the wallet from the floor.
“Waitress!” a customer called from the other side of the restaurant.
About to go after Albert, she paused when the customer called for her a second time.
Shoving the wallet in the pocket of her apron, she muttered, “He’ll be back,” before heading for the customer calling her.
TWENTY-SEVEN
January’s late afternoon sky was as gray as the ocean, making it difficult to see where the horizon began or ended. Standing alone at the end of the pier, wrapped in her wool jacket, Claudia looked out to sea and for a brief moment felt compelled to simply jump into the icy waters and end it all. This was not how it was supposed to go down. She had fully expected Clint to simply write her a check and send her on her way; the old Clint would have done that.
Claudia did not want to go to jail, but the walls were closing in on her, and without money to help her start a new life, in another country—like Clint was going to do—then she could possibly face ruin. If Dirk hadn’t show
n up, it might have been easier. Dirk complicated matters and made her nervous, never knowing what he was going to tell people. Then to make everything worse, Albert Hanson was in Frederickport. Who else from her and Clint’s past would be showing up?
It was all Clint’s fault. It had been his idea, all of it. Looking back, it was actually pretty cheeky of him to approach her with the idea, especially after what he had done to her in Mexico. Of course, Clint never understood why she had been so upset at the time. He had accused her of lacking a sense of humor.
A gust of wind made her shiver. Seeking warmth, she dug her hands into her coat’s pockets. Her right hand hit something cold and hard, and then she remembered she had put it there. Her small pistol. Wrapping her hand around the gun, keeping it in her pocket, she wondered if she had the courage to take care of those who threatened her freedom.
“Where did Clint go?” came a familiar voice behind her.
Startled, she twirled around to face the person and without thought pulled the revolver from her pocket.
“HOW DID IT GO WITH CLAUDIA?” Danielle asked Walt when he returned to Marlow House.
“Not good. Maybe we should go up to my room and talk?” he suggested.
“Why? We’re all alone in the house.” Danielle smiled. Sitting on the parlor sofa, she closed the book she had been reading and patted the empty spot next to her.
“Where is everyone?” Walt asked as he sat down.
“Well, I haven’t seen the Russoms since they left early this morning. They must be having fun with their family; they never stick around here. Rachel isn’t back from the movies yet. I assume Tanya is still in Astoria, and Dirk took off not long after you left with Claudia. Where is she, by the way?”
“She was pretty upset. I left her down at the pier.”
“So it didn’t go well?”
“According to her, I might have more problems than just an unwanted marriage.” Walt leaned back in the sofa and put his arm around her. “Remind me, the next time I move into someone’s body, make sure I thoroughly check them out.”
Haunting Danielle 20-The Ghost Who Was Says I Do Page 17