A Grave Mistake (14 page)

“I will.” Wendy reached for the doorknob and Belladonna hissed, causing the woman’s brows to mash together. “I guess your cat doesn’t like me.”

“She’s persnickety,” Morgan apologized.

Wendy narrowed her eyes in the direction of the chair and cracked the door open. The wind blew the door wide, gusting into the shop and setting papers and herbs flying in the air.

“Meow!” Belladonna flew out from under the chair and raced around the shop. Chasing the papers and herbs, she leapt into the air, twisting and turning, then plopped onto the ground and raced around the edge of the shop again.

“Hey, cut that out,” Morgan said as the door slammed shut. She tried to intercept the cat, but failed. Belladonna made one more loop around the shop, hopping up into the jewelry drawer Fiona had left open and swatting out an earring that she proceeded to bat around the floor.

“Give that back.” Fiona chased the cat to the back of the room, through the bathroom and then back out front where Belladonna finally batted the earring so hard it sailed into a crack between the old floorboards and wall.

Fiona crouched at the wall, stuck the nail of her finger in and tried to pry the earring out.

“Nice going, Belladonna.” Fiona glared at the cat, who was all wide eyes and innocence perched on a chair, grooming her right paw. “It’s stuck and I can’t get it out.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately.” Morgan stood looking at the cat, her hands fisted on her hips. “But we really don’t have time for this. We need to get back home and pick up Jolene and Celeste and get to the nursing home.”

“I know.” Fiona stood, brushing the dust off her knees. “I’ll just finish up the last repair. The necklaces need to sit for a while to let the metal harden up, but we can swing back and get them after we visit Finch.”

“Sounds like a plan, but please hurry.” Morgan glanced at her watch. “We don’t want to give Bly too much time to work on his plan to find the relic … or to stop us from finding it.”

Chapter Sixteen

Celeste had spent a restless night, filled with dreams of wrestling energy-infused mortars and pestles away from paranormals with bad intent. When she finally woke up, the sun had already risen and a quick glance into the driveway showed her that Morgan and Fiona were gone.

Luke and Swain, however, were not. She could hear the low sounds of their voices downstairs. She couldn’t make out what they were saying, but assumed they must have been making plans to transfer Swain’s mother. She could hear her mother bossing Jolene around as they prepared the rooms down at the end of the hall. A smile flitted across her lips as she pictured how exasperated Jolene must be getting—her little sister didn’t like being told what to do.

Celeste was glad they were helping Swain. He seemed like a good guy. His motive to help his mother was selfless and if Morgan’s instincts said they should work with him, then that was good enough for her.

Hopefully, they could find the relic, help Swain’s Mom and then hand it over to Dorian, who would keep it safe in some secret government hiding place.

If only they could figure out where the relic was.

Celeste sat on her bed with a sigh. She felt like she could help out more. She knew Ezra left a clue because he’d told her himself, but things would be a lot easier if he would just come out and
tell
her where it was. Her fists clenched in frustration. What good was her special gift if she couldn’t contact these ghosts whenever she wanted?

“Why so glum?”

The voice startled Celeste and she whirled around to see her grandmother—or rather her grandmother’s ghost—standing on the other side of the room.

“Gram!” Celeste’s breath rushed out. Her grandmother’s ghost had a habit of popping up when Celeste was deep in thought. You’d think she’d be used to it by now. “You scared me.”

Her grandmother laughed. “They teach us that over here, you know. Ghosts are supposed to scare people.”

Celeste frowned. “Really?”

“Nah, I just do it because it’s fun.” Grandma’s ghost cocked her head to the side as if listening. “What the heck is going on here? Are you guys opening a bed and breakfast?”

Celeste laughed. “No. We’re just having some guests.”

Grandma nodded. “I heard you guys had some goings on. In fact, that’s why I’m here.”

Celeste’s brows shot up. “Really. You mean you can help us?”

“Maybe. I had a visit from Ezra Finch. You know, I knew him back in the day. Of course, he was quite old back in my day, but we used to all go to him for his remedies.”

Celeste nodded. “Oh.”

“Well, anyway, the guy always did think he was the cat’s meow. But he said he had an important message for you so here I am.”

Celeste leaned forward. “What’s the message?”

Grandma’s ghost swirled over to the window. She lifted her semi-translucent arm and pushed the curtain aside. “Lovely day today.”

Celeste gritted her teeth. One thing she’d learned about Grandma’s ghost was that she loved to play up the big moment. She was stretching it out, making Celeste wait.

“The message?” Celeste prompted.

“Oh. Right.” The ghost turned from the window, her forehead creasing. “He was very cryptic. Of course, he was that way in life, too. Anyway, he said you made a grave mistake.”

Celeste frowned. “No kidding. We misinterpreted the clues. That’s not a very helpful message. Are you sure that’s what he said?”

“Yes, but I felt like he meant it in a literal way. Not that you just made a mistake. If you get my drift.” Gram’s ghost drifted up and down to stress the last word.

Celeste chewed her bottom lip. More literal? What did that mean? And then it clicked in.

“That’s it!” She rushed over to Gram’s ghost and attempted a hug which only resulted in her feeling wet, cold and a little queasy. “Thanks! I know exactly what he meant.”

She brushed water vapor off her arms and rushed from the room.

***

Celeste took the front stairs two at a time, arriving in the foyer just as Morgan and Fiona were coming in the front door.

“I know what we did wrong!” Celeste said, then frowned at Fiona when she noticed Belladonna curled up in her arms. “What were you doing with the cat?”

“She must have hidden in the car again.” Fiona dumped the cat unceremoniously on the floor. “She was at
Sticks and Stones
.”

“What did you mean when you said you knew what we did wrong?” Morgan ignored the cat, who flipped her tail up at them as she slunk away.

“I had a visit from Gram and she gave me a message from Ezra.” Celeste continued down the stairs to the oak floor of the foyer. “He said we made a grave mistake.”

Morgan made a face. “He said that before, didn’t he?”

Fiona shrugged out of her jacket. “And I think Thaddeus said something like that, too.”

“Yes, but didn’t you think he was using the word ‘grave’ as an adjective? I know I did. But I think he was really using it as a noun. We made a mistake interpreting the
grave
stone.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Jolene said from the top of the stairs where she was carefully helping Johanna down.

Celeste ignored her sister’s sarcastic remark and grabbed her cell phone from the foyer table. “The meaning of the epitaph isn’t what we thought. We need to look at that again.” Her fingers tapped on the screen. “I’ll get Cal over here. He’s good at this stuff.”

“Maybe I can help” Swain appeared at the top of the stairs behind Johanna and Jolene.

“Sure, we can use all the help we can get.” Morgan hung her coat on the hall tree. “Let’s go to the kitchen.”

“Good thing we have a big kitchen,” Jolene muttered. She helped Johanna to the last step and then reached for the wheelchair.

“Can’t you see that I can walk?” Johanna pushed her away. “I came down the stairs, didn’t I?”

“With my help…”

“Fine, then you can help me
walk
into the kitchen.”

Celeste, Morgan and Fiona went ahead, leaving their sister and mother to battle their way into the kitchen behind them. Celeste filled the Keurig with water and turned it on. Her phone pinged.

“Cal’s just down the street. He’ll be here in five.”

Cal arrived just as they were all settled in, with coffees in hand. His brows raised up when he noticed Johanna seated in one of the tall kitchen bar stools instead of the wheelchair he was accustomed to seeing her in.

She beamed at his unspoken question. “I’m walking much better now … though I guess I’ll still need the chair a bit.”

“That’s great.” He made his way over to Celeste and planted a kiss on her cheek, causing a flurry of butterflies in her stomach. She looked up at him and time paused as they smiled into each other’s eyes. They’d been a couple now for almost two years, but he still made her heart beat faster every time she saw him.

“Enough with the lovey-dovey stuff,” Jolene said. “Let’s get down to business.”

Cal flushed and Celeste cleared her throat, then put a piece of lined paper on the kitchen island. “I wrote the epitaph down on here … of course we still don’t know the bottom line.” She avoided looking at Jolene. She knew her sister was already down in the dumps about the loss of her paranormal gifts and she didn’t want to make her feel worse by reminding her that her photographic memory would really help them out now.

“Let me see,” Cal angled it toward him. “We already have the clue that the relic is a mortar and pestle … that must be what he means by ‘when two become one’.”

“Good thinking. The mortar and pestle combine into one item that makes the remedies!” Swain said. "So the rest of that line, 'the healing's begun' makes perfect sense."

“Right.” Cal nodded. “We thought the second line was linked to the first and it might still be. At first, we assumed the first line referred to Ezra and Lila-Mae becoming one in marriage, so we assumed the second line referred to where they became one. The church.”

“But, that was wrong and if we follow the same logic, ‘My favorite place under the sun’ would be where the mortar and pestle come together,” Swain added.

“His pharmacy on the Finch farm.” Celeste’s heart plummeted in her chest. “But it burned down years ago. We’ll never find the relic there now.”

Cal held up his hand. “Let’s just get through the rest of the epitaph before we lose hope. There might be another clue that will help.”

“The next line, ‘look to the west, I can finally rest’, looks like a clue that the relic can be found in the western section of the shop,” Swain said.

“Which doesn’t help us now that the pharmacy is no longer there,” Jolene said without looking up from the piece of paper she was scribbling on.

“The building itself isn’t there. But didn’t you girls say there was still some debris?” Johanna asked.

Fiona nodded. “You don’t think the mortar and pestle could still be there in the remains?”

Johanna shrugged. “You never know.”

“What’s that last part, ‘I can finally rest’, mean?” Celeste asked.

“Probably once he’d hidden the relic and written the clue, he felt like he could finally rest. His job was done and he could go to his grave in peace,” Cal answered.

Celeste sighed. “None of that is very helpful.”

“No, but at lest it gives us someplace new to look. The mortar and pestle was hidden in the pharmacy. We just have to figure out what happened to it after the fire,” Morgan pointed out.

“I hope it wasn’t made out of wood,” Fiona said.

Celeste grimaced. “Yeah, it could have burned and not even exist anymore.”

Swain’s face clouded over. “No. I refuse to think that. We don’t know what it was made out of, so let’s not assume. It could have been metal, or alabaster or even cement.” He glanced at the ceiling. “Mother needs that mortar and pestle desperately.”

Celeste’s heart pinched. She hoped they could find it for Swain’s sake in addition to the real reason—to keep it out of the hands of Bly or anyone else who would use it for bad intent. “We need to narrow down exactly what it was made out of and if it had any distinguishing marks. It’s not like mortar and pestles are rare and we can’t test out every one of them we see by compounding remedies and seeing how well they work.”

“Well, the last line probably gives you a clue to that,” Cal said.

Jolene pushed the piece of paper she’d been writing on into the middle of the island. Celeste could see that it had a series of lines and curved semicircles.

“I’ve started to remember a little of it.” Jolene pointed to the symbols. “That’s the beginning of the line. At least, I think it is.”

Cal swung the paper to face him and squinted at it. “That’s a good start. I can already tell by the tops of the letters that the first word is probably ‘It’s’.”

Celeste angled her head to look at the paper straight on like Cal was. Now that he’d said it, she could clearly see he was right about what the first word was. Excitement built in her chest. “What about the others? Can you tell what they are?”

Cal pressed his lips together. “Not with any degree of certainty. I think the next word could be ‘the’. It makes sense with the first word. But that next word is harder. See how it has a curved top? It could start with a ‘B’ or a ‘P’ or even a ‘C’. It’s impossible to tell until you fill in some of the other letters and words.”