A Ghostly Murder (6 page)

 

Chapter 9

I
still don't see what my medical file has to do with figuring out who killed me,” Mamie cried from the passenger seat of the hearse.

The old mill was past town, deep in the country. The drive was beautiful. The road curved around the countryside and gave a good view of the mountains. It was a beautiful morning. The sun had already chased the morning fog away.

“No stone unturned.” I repeated the mantra I had taken to heart since I had become a Betweener.

I had learned I was sort of a ghost private detective. After all, it was me that had to figure out what happened to them. Medical history included.

“You've been dead awhile, and if you don't have any next of kin for me to question, I've got to start somewhere.” I looked over at her. “Plus your headstone reads, ‘I told you I was sick.' ”

“I know. I laughed so hard when I thought of it.” Her face hardened. Her lips puckered around her gums. “I never thought I was going to die from the hands of a murdering sonofabitch!”

“Do you know anyone who had a beef with you?” I asked. “Besides Granny.” I eased the hearse around the road and pulled into the gravel drive of the old mill.

Granny and Mamie obviously had a beef, but no one seemed to want to talk about it.

She shook her head. The pillbox hat jiggled. She pulled a ­couple bobby pins from her hair and used them to keep the hat in place.

My phone rang, and I pulled it out. Caller ID said it was Eternal Slumber. What did Charlotte Rae want now?

“Hello?” I answered.

“Emma Lee, it's John Howard.” He announced himself like I didn't know his voice. “Are you coming to work today?”

“I'll be there shortly. I had some business to take care of this morning. Why? Is something wrong?” John Howard never called me. I wasn't even sure he knew how to use a phone.

He came to work every day. Never missed. Once, he was so sick, I made him lie down and sip hot tea. He refused not to work. Hardest working man I had ever seen.

“Nothing wrong. I was just wondering if I could head down and get the sports equipment this morning, since tomorrow night is our first softball game. I wouldn't have time after work to do it and deliver it to the other guys.”

“Absolutely!” I hit my head with my palm. I had totally forgotten to tell Jack Henry about the softball league and how I signed him up. “You go on and do what you need to do. We don't have any funerals the rest of the week, so your workload is light.”

“Thanks, Emma Lee.” John Howard hung up the phone.

Fluggie Callahan was standing in the doorway of the mill, glaring at me. I held up a “one sec” finger and quickly texted Jack Henry.

Eternal Slumber has a new softball team. You are on it. First game tomorrow night. I can't wait to root you on.
I put the phone on the seat and got out. Jack Henry wouldn't bother texting back. He would call and ask me why I would put him on the team without asking. This way, if the phone was in the car, I wouldn't hear it ring and feel obligated to answer and then beg him to be on the team.

“Gimme what ya got.” I followed Fluggie into her new office space.

Fluggie gestured for me to sit down. She walked around her desk and sat in her chair. She patted her messy up-­do and pulled out a pair of glasses. She stuck them on the ridge of her nose and pushed them up.

“Not a whole lot, but I thought you should know she left over a million dollars to Sleepy Hollow Baptist Church.” She scanned the insides of a folder before her magnified eyes looked up at me.

“One million dollars?” I asked. “How did you find this out?”

“I've got my informants.” She tapped her pencil on the desk. “There is a lawyer from Lexington involved in the entire transaction.” She slid a piece of paper across the desk with a name and number scribbled on it. “I smell a rat on this. First off, who leaves a small country church a million dollars? Secondly, I looked into courthouse records about the church, and there haven't been any sort of renovations or anything close to being done that would amount to one million dollars.”

I nodded and kept my eye on the paper. There was a niggling suspicion in my gut telling me Fluggie was right.

“You tell me.” She sucked in a deep breath. “What has the preacher done with the money?”

Sleepy Hollow Baptist wasn't the only church in town, but it was the church that all the ­people I knew attended or at least belonged to. Pastor Brown had to be as old as dirt, and he had been the pastor there for as long as I could remember.

“It isn't unusual for members of the church to leave something to the church in their will.” I wanted to debunk any notions swirling around in my head telling me Pastor Brown wasn't as holy as I had always thought he was. “And if I'm not mistaken, I do believe they post those generous donations in the church bulletins.”

“Sounds like you need to do some investigating.” Fluggie's homely face arranged itself into a grin. “Get your Sunday go to meetin' clothes cleaned and ironed.”

“It just so happens I saw Pastor Brown this morning, and he extended a personal invitation to church.” I grinned. It was a perfect excuse to nose around.

“I guess I know where you will be tomorrow morning if I need you,” she said. “Did you get anything personal on Mamie?” she asked. Her chair creaked when she leaned back, her hands folded in front of her.

“She had a maid, Dixie Dunn, who can't be any older than fifty. Now Dixie works for Beulah Paige Bellefry.” I folded the piece of paper and stuck it in my pocket. “I just so happen to be going to an Auxiliary meeting at Beulah's house tomorrow. I want to get Dixie alone, or at least give her a cleaning job at Eternal Slumber so I can question her.”

“I've got a few feelers out about where the rest of Mamie Sue Preston's wealth went.” She pointed to the blank space between us. “Maybe you can get more information from that lawyer. When I went there, he could smell I was a reporter and called me out on it.”

“Undertakers have a way of getting into places.” I smiled.

Fluggie and I parted ways with a list of tasks. Both of us agreed to get in touch with the other if we found out something.

My list of questions was growing. The biggest one of all was why she left Pastor Brown the million dollars and why there hadn't been any gossip about it.

That was the type of gossip that would have spread like melted butter on a piece of toast, but Pastor Brown had never mentioned a word. Not even to the congregation.

It looked like I'd be taking a spot in the front pew of Sleepy Hollow Baptist tomorrow.

The roar of absolute silence hung between me and my ghost friend on our way back into town.

“Sooooo,” I dragged out the word for more emphasis, “do you want to tell me why you left Sleepy Hollow Baptist one million dollars?”

“It's the right thing to do.” Her words were short and direct.

“What does that mean?” I asked. “Feed the needy. Feed the animals in the animal shelters. That would be the right thing to do.”

“It was my money, and I got to decide what I wanted to do with it. Just like I wanted O'Dell Burns to bury me!” Mamie pounded her tiny tight fist on the dash of the hearse.

“And I'm the Betweener who needs the answers to these questions so I can help you get to the other side!” I yelled back, which didn't prove to solve anything.

Mamie Sue Preston disappeared into thin air.

She was protecting someone, and I was going to find out who. Unfortunately, the person might be her killer.

 

Chapter 10

I
f Mamie wasn't going to help me out with simple questions, I wanted to just forget about helping her, but she and I both knew
that
wasn't going to happen. I was going to have to figure this out without her help, and I didn't care who she was protecting. Even if it was a man of the cloth.

The Sleepy Hollow Courthouse held as many secrets as the Auxiliary women. If you knew exactly where to dig, the answers would show.

I pulled the hearse into the parking space right in front of the oldest structure in town. The three large concrete pillars held up the ornate design. Several large steps led up to the heavy lead-­glass doors. The marble hallways echoed with each step as I made my way to the records room.

“How can I help you today?” The deputy clerk looked up from her filing cabinet and swept her bangs to the side.

“I think I've got it.” I smiled and helped myself to the public files in the back of the room.

Things such as deeds, marriage certificates, wills, taxes, anything public was located there. Anything public on Mamie Sue would be there. Including her street address.

Addresses was more like it.

Mamie Sue Preston held the deed to not only a mansion in Triple Thorn, the wealthiest neighborhood in Sleepy Hollow, but also the building where Pose and Relax was located, as well as the deed to Sleepy Hollow Baptist Church along with a house in the country. The properties were left in trust with Emmitt Moss, Attorney at Law, as trustee of the DD LLC. The land deeds showed the properties changing from Mamie to the trust as well. Who did the trust go to? Who was this lawyer covering for? And who or what was DD LLC?

Is Emmitt Moss the lawyer you went to see? He is the trustee for the trust for DD LLC. Mamie owns a bunch of property, including Sleepy Hollow Baptist Church. All the property went to a trust at DD LLC.
I texted Fluggie. She was good at looking into those types of things, and I was good at sniffing out ­people.

I used the notes section on my phone to type in the Triple Thorn address, which I plugged into my maps. It was time I went to see some neighbors about sweet little ole Mamie Sue or poke around to see if anyone had a need for pre-­need funeral arrangements.

The mansions in Triple Thorn only reiterated I was in the wrong business. There wasn't hardly any money to be made after a funeral and Charlotte Rae took her salary. We had agreed she'd make more money, since I was living at the funeral home and using all the utilities I needed. There was something to be said for dead ­people. Job security.

Still, these houses were colossal. All of them had at least five or six roofs peaking at all different pitches. Not to mention funny-­shaped trees. Some lawns had tree animals, while others had water fountains big enough for me to swim in.

I pulled the hearse into Mamie Sue's driveway and stopped right at the privacy gate. I got out. With my hands on my hips, I looked around me. There was no getting in there unless I hit the button. I wasn't sure if anyone was there, but I did know DD LLC was the owner.

“Hello?” I pushed the button several times.

“You can stop hitting the button. One time is sufficient,” a woman's voice answered through the speaker. “No one is dead here.”

“What?” I asked, my finger still holding the button down.

“Stop holding the button. You can just talk,” the woman instructed me. “The hearse. No one is dead.”

“Oh. You can see me?” I asked, looking around for a camera.

“What do you want?” she asked again.

“I had a few questions about the owner of the house, Mamie Sue.”

Dead silence.

I leaned into the box. “Hello?”

“I'm here.” She paused. “Okay.”

Buzz, buzz.
The gate started to move. I jumped in the hearse and drove up the long blacktop driveway. The landscapers stood up on those fancy mowers and zipped around the trees and wrought-­iron fencing. There were a ­couple of guys hand-­trimming the edging with scissors. I didn't envy their job. My back hurt looking at them.

Mamie Sue had definitely known how to live. Her white colonial home had a fenced wraparound porch. The outdoor furniture looked like it cost more than what I would pay for indoor furniture. I could definitely get lost in one of the large comfy cushions.

I got out of the hearse.

A stick-­thin young woman with an apron tied around her stood at the top of the colonial steps, her hands clasped in front of her.

“Can I help you?” she asked in the same voice from the call box, only very low now, almost whispered.

“I wanted to talk to the person who lives here now,” I informed her.

“They aren't here.” She didn't budge from her post in the middle of the steps. “What did you want to know about Ms. Preston?”

I had to lean a little closer to hear her.

She wasn't messing around. Her hair was a plume of black in a low ponytail at the nape of her neck. There was no way she was much older than me. Thirties at the oldest.

“Can you tell me who owns the house now?” I asked.

“Ms. Preston still owns the home.” She wasn't offering up much information or expanding on my question. She peeled off a long, heavy-­duty yellow cleaning glove. “I just clean here.”

“I thought you said the owner wasn't here at the moment, so if Ms. Preston owns it still—­”

She interrupted me. “You asked me if the person living here was here. They are not here. Now, I have to get back to work.”

“Can you please tell the
person
living here to give me a call?”

“I suppose.”

I rushed back to the hearse, grabbed an Eternal Slumber brochure from the glove box and ran it back up the stairs to her. There was a familiarity to her eyes.

“Did you go to Sleepy Hollow High?” I asked.

She tugged on the brochure until I let go. “No.” She turned and walked back into the house. The sound of dead bolts sliding into place on the other side of the door was followed by the sound of footsteps walking away.

My mind was lost in what had just happened. The girl looked familiar, and I was having a hard time figuring out what it was that had resonated with me. One thing I did know, someone involved with DD LLC lived there, but who?

I pulled over in the next driveway down and sat, trying to recall everything the conversation had held.

Fine. I'll be on the team, but you have to have dinner with me and my parents tonight at their house.
My phone chirped a text from Jack Henry.

Blackmail?
I texted back.

Only if you are going to continue to be my girlfriend.
He texted back a response I wasn't going to fight.

His mom's words the last time I met her played in my head. “
So what are you going to do with your life, Emma Lee?
”

He must've read my mind. He texted,
Stop thinking my mom doesn't like you. I love you! I'll pick you up at 5.

I texted back a heart emoji, which he hated. He said emojis weren't a form of communication and when did they become punctuation. Just for spite, I sent a smiley face as well.

A car pulling up to Mamie's gate got my attention. It was a long blue station wagon with a sign on the side that read D
USTING
D
IXIES
and included a dancing feather duster image.

Someone was still paying for a cleaning ser­vice and the landscapers, plus the woman who answered the door was dressed as a maid. Who was funding this? There wasn't an estate.

I had a ­couple hours until I was going to meet Jack Henry at the funeral home. I ran through the McDonald's and got me a large Diet Coke with extra ice. I needed the extra caffeine if I was going to have to deal with both Jo Francis Ross and a fancy Lexington lawyer.