Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun (14 page)

Deputy Cooper pulled the door open.

"You all right in there?" he asked, directing his beam back and forth between Joe and me.

Personally, I'd have to conduct a panty check before I answered. As far as Joe was concerned, he was on his own.

I looked over at the uncharacteristically quiet senior, not sure whether we should tell the officer why we were cowering in the car making like two burned-out Ghostbusters.

"Are
you
all right?" I asked Joe.

Joe looked at me. "If you're all right, I'm all right," he maintained. Ah, the Townsend ego.

"Then we're okay," I told Joe. "We're okay," I repeated to the officer. "Just got a little chilly standing out there."

The deputy nodded. "You'll he happy to know, Mr. Townsend, that the occupants of this residence have declined to file charges," Deputy Cooper advised. "That is not to say that you are in the free and clear. These folks have an expectation of privacy, and you've got to respect that."

I wanted to advise the deputy that politicians and famous persons basically couldn't expect the same level of privacy as John Q. Public. Being famous came with certain costs, privacy being one of them. And while I felt that some media types went too far, it didn't seem excessively intrusive to ask an author who owed her celebrity to her readers to conduct a short interview with a very nice, very easy to talk to hometown girl hoping-to-make-it-big reporter-type. Of course, I kept this opinion to myself. Now didn't seem the time to debate freedom of press issues.

"It wasn't as if I climbed a tree and was peeking in bedroom windows," Joe hump fed, and I hoped the deputy didn't see me twitch. "All I wanted to do was show her the picture. Help her remember. Surely there's no law against that."

The deputy sighed. "For reasons of her own, the individual you're talking about has chosen not to meet with you, Mr. Townsend. There's no law that compels her to do so. Maybe she'll change her mind. Maybe she won't. But she has asked that she be permitted to work undisturbed for the remainder of her stay here in Grandville, and I've promised her that will be the case. Are we clear on what is expected?"

Joe shrugged.

"Like I have a choice," he said. "I'll tell you one thing. No matter what her next book is like, I'm posting a scathing review on Amazon."

I bit back a smile. Looked like the Hornet's stinger was primed and ready, and pointed in Courtney Howard's direction.

Ouch!

CHAPTER TWELVE

I followed Joe home, making quite certain he was in for the night, and reluctantly agreed to share a late-night snack of cherry cheesecake that Joe's neighbor lady, Abigail Winegardner, had brought over the day before. Okay, so maybe he didn't have to twist my arm. It was cheesecake, after all.

Joe gave me the prom photo so I could use it in the newspaper article. If all else failed, I'd run the picture with a story about Joe and his attempt to hook up with his former prom date. I still wanted one more crack at Courtney Howard, but wasn't sure what to try next. Short of breaking and entering--and unlike some intrepid reporters, I wasn't ready to go to jail for the sake of the story--I had no clue how to breach the stone wall that surrounded the reclusive author.

I left Joe's around eleven, wondering what I would find when I got home. I'd turned my cell phone off. I knew Shelby would call with more threats to switch to the wooden-shoe tribe than Gram had butt-ugly fertility statuettes to decorate the double-wide.

I decided to drop the county and city law enforcement call sheets off at the
Gazette
before I went home. I could scan the infamous prom photo and make a copy, and maybe Google Elizabeth Courtney Howard to see if I could turn up anything new. I hoped that by the time I got home, Shelby would be gone and Gram would be in her bed. Which was now just down the hall from me. Mere steps away. I grimaced. I had to have a talk with my dad about his mother.

I unlocked the back door of the newspaper office and flicked on a light, they dropped the paperwork into the appropriate basket. I walked by Stan's darkened office and snared a mint from his candy dish, looking at the comfy padded office chair behind the great big desk. Me? All I rated was a folding chair and a scarred-up old table.

Stan always kept his computer turned on, so I decided, for efficiency's sake, that I'd just use his computer.

I inched into Stan's office, feeling a teensy bit ill at ease, and made my way behind his desk. I pulled the chair out and swiveled it around, the nicely padded seat open and inviting.

I eased down into the chair. Nice. Very nice. I swiveled it back around to face the computer, scanned Joe's photo and printed a copy off, then spent the next forty-five minutes researching the chills-and-thrills author who'd given the willies to generations.

I printed off bios and books, searching for a recent photograph of Howard--anything more recent than the antique photo that accompanied the author's bio on her hardbacks. I thought I'd hit pay dirt when I located a shot of the author taken three years earlier, on the streets of the Big Apple, as she was entering her hotel on the arm of a well-built fellow. Unfortunately, Howard was wearing a full-length black leather coat with a scarf draped around her head, and dark glasses like some old-time movie star, so there wasn't much to see.

I checked out the guy, and blinked. I couldn't be sure, but it looked like the stripteaser from Howard's bedroom the other night. I'd have to see his chest to know for sure.

I printed off the photo, along with all the information on Howard I felt might be useful.

Courtney had married Kevin Howard when she was twenty-two years old. She'd been married for only a year when her husband died in a noncombat military plane crash. Courtney Howard had never remarried. No wonder her stories always carried elements of true love that lasted forever. She'd lived her own love-for-a-lifetime story--one that had been cut tragically short.

Her first books, romance novels, were written under the pseudonym Beth Howard. The author made a genre jump to the horror/thriller chiller genre in her midforties, with unexpected success, each book garnering more fans and a higher position on the bestseller lists. Readers, it appeared, would pay good money to be scared out of their wits. Ten of her books had made it either to the big screen or to made-for-TV-movie billing. Megabooks. Megabucks. The stuff that dreams were made of. Or, in Howard's case, nightmares--that paid off big. Courtney Howard made her home in rural Connecticut on a large estate outside Essex, where she penned her novels in seclusion.

I finished up, logged off the 'Net and turned in the chair to face the wide expanse of desk in front of me. The desk had a larger area than my bed. I noticed Stan's goofy half-glasses on the desktop, and I reached out and stuck them on the end of my nose.

Okay, I admit, this was feeling a wee bit weird, but I went with it.

"Turner, get your ass in here! Turner, for gawd's sake use spell-check! Turner, keep that damned cell phone charged up!" What can I say? I get a little carried away sometimes.

I soon decided a little role reversal was in order.

"Rodgers, get that fat butt in here!" I barked. "Rodgers, for gawd's sake, edit your copy, man! Rodgers, move that lard ass next door and get me a cappuccino!" I was really into my little reversal-of-fortune fantasy when I happened to look up to find my brilliant, caring and very understanding boss standing in the doorway.

"What the hell are you doing, Turner?"

I popped out of Stan's chair like it had an electric charge hooked up to the seat.

"Nothing! Work! Research!" I said. "See?" I handed him the sheets I'd printed off. "Courtney Howard research. I was hoping to find something that could help me storm the castle walls they've erected around that woman."

"And did you?"

"Well, not yet, but we are making progress." I told him about the incident at the Holloway house earlier that evening. "So I'll have something for sure to run. Maybe not the in-depth interview with major AP appeal I'd hoped for, but the
Gazette
will definitely have something no other news outlet has."

I removed myself from behind Stan's desk and edged toward the door, thankful that he didn't appear to have heard my one-woman performance.

"It seems there may be something to that real estate angle on the Holloway house after all," Stan said. "The wife says Rivas is definitely interested in acquiring the house. She thinks they might be looking to expand into a B and B. With the history of the house and folks getting a thrill out of staying at a place that is supposedly haunted, they figure they could keep the place filled year-round."

"Really?" I couldn't imagine someone wanting to spend money for a night in a haunted house. In all the movies I ever watched, people were
paid
to stay in the creepy house... and usually never lived to collect their moolah. "So yet another story I can follow and pin down," I said.

"Good luck confirming it. The wife thinks Rivas will pretty much want to keep it out of the news until it's a done deal, or others will jump on the bandwagon and try to outbid them. Rivas is said just to be waiting for the heir to sign off on the paperwork."

"By heir, you mean Elizabeth Courtney Howard."

He nodded.

"Very interesting," I said, thinking it was more than fortuitous that my gramma had an in with a certain Romeo Rivas that her granddaughter might be able to use to her advantage. One might even say it was predestined. Preordained. Meant to be.

All I needed was access to the house so I that could have a chance to plead my case to Courtney Howard personally. I had to think a small-town success who had fought her way to the top of the literary world was bound to have some empathy for a young woman trying to do much the same. At least I hoped so.

"I guess I'd better call it a night," I said, picking up my stack of papers and heading for the door. " 'Night, Stan."

"Just a minute, Turner. Aren't you forgetting something?"

I stopped in the doorway. "Yes?"

"Could I have my glasses back now?" Stan asked.

I looked down my nose cross-eyed and realized I still had the glasses that weren't really glasses resting on the end of my nose. I handed them to Stan.

"So, goodnight, then, Boss," I said, relieved that he apparently hadn't heard the worst of my role-playing. I had just left Stan's office when he called after me.

"Don't you mean 'lard-ass'?" he asked.

I ran to my car, deciding that whatever awaited me at my domicile had to be more enjoyable than explaining myself to Stan. Besides, even I don't know sometimes why I do the things I do.

I motored home, grateful to see that Shelby's Jeep was gone, and tiptoed past the dogs. They raised weary heads in "hello, how are you, we're beat" acknowledgment of my return, then went back to their slumber. I opened the front door slowly, cursing the creak that accompanied the motion. I stepped in and caught a whiff of something unusual. I rolled my eyes. Incense. I hated the smell of incense.

I hung my jacket on the coat tree by the door and moved cautiously inside. If I could just make it to my bedroom...

"Tressa? Is that you?"

Crap.

Gram's call came from the back bedroom. Her bedroom now, apparently.

"Yes, Gram. It's me."

"You alone?"

"Yes."

"Dumb question. Come on back."

I walked down the hall, my footsteps uncertain. Wary. I stopped outside her closed door.

"Are you alone?" I thought to ask, not wanting to open the door to see Joltin' Joe Townsend in my gramma's bed.

"Unfortunately, yes."

I shook my head and opened the door. "Knock, knock," I said, and stuck my head in.

The spare bedroom had been transformed from a second room devoted to my western clothing and horse paraphernalia into something out of the
Arabian Nights
. Gauzy dusty rose-colored window treatments matched the full-sized bedspread. My horse-head lamp had been replaced with a dark maroon-colored lamp shaped somewhat like a feminine figure, with long, sleek curves and no head. The lampshade was covered with the same dusty rose color as the curtains. I was amazed at the transformation. My gramma could accomplish more in one day than I could in a week--and never raise a hand doing it. Other than to point out where she wanted things put, that is.

"Wow, you've been busy," I said--meaning "busy" as in putting other people to work, of course. Gram was in bed, her sheet and blankies pulled up to her chin. Remembering that Gram liked to sleep au naturel on occasion, I was glad to see her covered up to her golly-getter in bedding.

"You like it?" Gram asked. "It's called Romantic Rose. I'd like to paint the walls the same color. Maybe just a scoosh lighter."

I swallowed. Painting? That meant she was settling in for the long haul.

"It's nice," I said. "If a bit on the dark side."

"It sets a certain mood, don't you think?" she asked.

I nodded. It set a mood that promised this bedroom was going to see more action than mine. "It sure does that," I said. "So Shelby must have been a big help." "Help" being a relative term here.

Gram sat up. "She sure was. Why, that girl can reach that storage space above my closet without a stool. She's a worker, too, if a little excitable."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

Gram patted her head, which was encased in one of those sleep bonnets that help your hairdo stay done while you're sleeping, so you can avoid having one side of your hair flatter than the other. No more bedhead!

"When we returned to the house with our first load and she found that you'd skedaddled, she put up a hue and cry that set the dogs to howling. I almost dropped my Kokopelli. You remember my Native American fertility god. The one we had to superglue? The poor fellow couldn't have survived a second emasculation," she said, and I winced.

"I had to run a couple errands," I explained. And something came up."

"Too bad my Kokopelli will never be able to say that," Gram said with a sniff. "Did you have newspaper business? Shelby thought you were backdooring her again. Whatever that means. She said if she found out you were keeping her out of the loop, she'd take that loop and--"

"I don't think I need to hear more," I said, putting a hand to my throat. "I'll give her a call. It's cool."

"So were you working on the Holloway story?" she asked.

I nodded. "Online research, basically." I thought I'd better leave out Joe's visits to the house, and how the second one had turned out. Best to let Joe handle the heavy lifting here. "Howard has had some sad moments in her life, with her young husband dying so soon after they were married. She never married again. I wonder if that's because her first was The One, and she knew she could never feel for another man what she'd felt for him." I really wanted to ask Howard that question. To have her speak of things she'd never spoken of publicly before. And to pick me to tell those things to. Hey, if you're gonna dream, dream big.

"Maybe she was just too picky," Gram said. "There's lots of good men out there. Or maybe she was actually a closet lesbian. That happens, you know. On
Maury
the other day they had this fifty-five-year-old man who'd been married for thirty years, the father of five kids, and now all of a sudden he tells his family he's been gay all these years and introduces them to his secret lover, Sven. So who's to know?"

"Sven?" I shook my head to clear it, then remembered I needed her help. "So, what's this with you and Jack Rivas? Is he one of those 'good men' you were just talking about?" I asked, hoping to get a feel for whether my gramma would be in a position to pick up any information about the pending real estate deal between Howard and J&R Development.

"He's an incredible dancer," she said. "He's got more moves than Hawkl Moving and Storage," she said. "But he also has an ego that could fill Wells Fargo Arena."

"But you enjoy spending time with him, right?"

Gram shrugged. "He's a big spender. He made big bucks off his wife's family business. And he's still got his finger in that business."

Now this was what I wanted to hear.

"Stan heard that Rivas Real Estate may be involved in the sale of the Holloway house," I said, not wanting to bring up the bed-and-breakfast angle just yet. I started to say something along the lines of, "What I wouldn't give to get in that house to snap a few pictures for my article," when I looked at my gramma lying there all cute and wrinkled, and guess what? I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it. If she and Joe Townsend really were meant to be together in their golden years, I didn't want to place her in another man's path solely for personal gain. There had to be another way to get my story. "You'd better get some sleep, Gram," I told her, bending down to give her a kiss on her soft cheek. "You've had a busy day." I came away with Oil of Olay-soaked lips. "Call if you need anything," I added.