Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun (9 page)

I gave her a rather weary version of my eat-dirt look. I usually reserve it for Rick Townsend, but I thought the occasion--and the recipient--called for it.

I drained the glass of water I'd poured and gave Shelby another disgruntled look--one that clearly showed my displeasure but wasn't so defiant as to get me bench-pressed. I'd really wanted the light beer I'd promised myself earlier, but figured with an under age person on the premises, I'd better pass on the alcohol. Still, with Shelby's size and weight, I had no doubt that she could probably drink me under the table with relatively little difficulty.

After careful consideration, I was ready to concede that perhaps I'd been wrong about the ghostly manifestation near the cemetery. For all I knew, I'd mistaken a clothesline sheet or a loose piece of plastic blowing in the wind for something supernatural. I do tend to have a rather healthy and active imagination. Especially when I happen to be on the grounds of a house that has had more spooky tales associated with it than the Tower of London does.

But the wooden box? Now that puppy was definitely not the product of an overly stimulated--albeit naturally squirrelly--imagination. Nor was it linked to drug use, legal or otherwise, or related to a history of mental illness. That's not to say my family tree doesn't include a few branches that are home to members who occasionally forget where they hide their nuts, and who, from time to time, like to indulge in a game of road tag on the state highway.

"The only meds I take go plop, plop, fizz, fizz when you drink 'em," I told Shelby. "And I didn't say it was a coffin, exactly. It just looked like one."

"And the ghost?"

I shrugged. "I suppose I might have been mistaken about that," I acknowledged. "I did have that hot dog with sauerkraut and a side of onion rings for lunch."

Shelby grunted.

"And you know, Shelby, it's not as if I went out there at that hour of the night with the intention of getting an interview or anything like that," I pointed out.

"Right. You were on your vision quest," she said with a giant-sized sneer.

"I went to face my fears," I explained again. "To vanquish my phobia. To take back the night."

Shelby sighed. "You pull another Lone Ranger act on me, Kemosabe, and I'll take this story back--all the way to your friend Drew Van Vleet in New Holland."

"Excuse me?" I said and got to my feet. This was one of those throwin'-down-the-gauntlet moments. Or, to go with the season, the equivalent of a mooning-your-athletic-opponents moment. "You'd conspire with the enemy?" I asked. "Join forces with Attila the Dutch? Betray your own heritage and hometown and throw your lot in with the wooden-shoe brigade? Have you no loyalty?"

"I'd tiptoe through the tulips with a whacked-out two-hundred-pound Tiny Tim to meet Elizabeth Courtney Howard. You think I won't enlist the aid of your competitor if you won't honor our agreement? I'll do it quicker than you can say Dutch Letter, girlfriend," she announced.

I winced. Hoisted on an almond pastry.

"I have every intention of keeping you in the loop, Shelby Lynne," I said, deciding a pinky-swear gesture at this point would probably only succeed in getting me a broken pinky. "Like I said, I had no idea anyone would be there at that time of the night. Who would? You'd already told me they wouldn't arrive until tomorrow. I just had an issue or two I felt I needed to resolve so I could give my best to our little joint endeavor."

Shelby shoved away from the sink, and I forced myself not to back up. We stood eye to unnaturally thick neck. A crick developed near my collarbone, but, warrior woman that I am, I ignored it and stood my ground.

"See that those little 'issues' don't interfere with our journalistic extravaganza, or you'll be reading all about it in the
New Holland News,
" Shelby Lynne advised. "Understand, partner?"

I nodded. "Roger that," I said.

She backed off, seeming satisfied at my capitulation. "So, what time are you picking me up, again? For the return to Haunted Holloway Hall," she elaborated before I could ask, "Huh?"

I made a face. She made it sound like one of those hokey horror-movie sequels. Uh, not exactly what I wanted to hear right about now. At least my next visit would be in broad daylight. Everything that went bump only bumped in the night, right?

"Pick me up at six-thirty sharp," Shelby instructed. "And be punctual. My naturally sunny personality turns cranky when I have to wait on people," she added.

I rolled my eyes. I must've blinked and missed her Mr. Rogers moment.

"Make it seven-thirty," I said, feeling the need to at least put on a show of being the grown-up here. "I'll need to make a coffee-and-doughnut stop. Stakeout essentials," I added for her edification. "We may need nourishment."

Shelby nodded, and I thought I sensed a fellow Krispy Kreme fan.

"I take my coffee black," she said. "And no jelly filling. I prefer pudding or creme."

I nodded my understanding, thankful that I'd discovered something else we had in common besides an affinity for sarcasm. And, curiously, I got the feeling that before our little odyssey was over, I might find that Shelby Lynne Sawyer and I were more alike than I ever expected.

And that was the scariest thought yet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Orlando Bloom was whispering sweet nothings in my ear, his hot breath inflaming my cheek, a finger tickling the love handles I vowed to have liposuctioned away if the diet and exercise routine I planned as New Year's resolutions tanked. I giggled. "Stop that," I said, reaching out to slap his hand away in a mock show of resistance. The poking resumed. "Behave yourself, you naughty, naughty boy," I said and laughed, grabbing the persistent finger, preparing to bring it to my lips.

"You havin' one of them wet dreams?" I blinked. Orlando had apparently relied for too long on writers to put words in his mouth. His extemporaneous romance dialogue sucked big-time. "I've been up for hours, Tressa. Waiting for you." "You have?" I came close to swallowing my tongue. There was hope for the guy yet, I decided, in a let's-get-naked-and-dirty sort of way.

"You're darn right. Now, if you're done slobbering on my hand, I need to tend to my ficus."

I tried every way I could to decipher the hidden--and erotic--meaning behind Orlando's latest remark, but the ficus reference totally threw me.

"Is there someone else?" I finally demanded, thinking his fiction about ficus-tending was about as lame as they came.

"Who else you expectin'? That ranger you'll probably let slip through your butterfingers?"

"Ranger Rick?" How had my little encounter with Orlando turned into a menage a trois?

"So where do you suggest I stick it?"

Okay, that one did the trick. I went from drool-drying-at-the-corner-of-my-mouth slumber to near panic that the first sex I'd had in way too long was about to be with a partner who needed a diagram of human anatomy to figure it out.

"Uh, it's not a good time," I said. "And I, like, have the nubs."

"Is that like crabs?"

I opened my eyes to find my gramma bending over me.

"Don't you have to get to work somewhere? You know. Pick a job. Any job."

I blinked the remaining sleep out of my eyes and stuck my head beneath my pillow, moaning when I put the past few minutes of my life on rewind and then rolled the tape forward. I didn't think I could face my gramma ever again.

"Then you're off today? Good. You can help me bring over some of my other things. And we still need to decide about the ficus."

That brought me out of my blanket cave like my mother's chocolate-chip pancakes brought me to the breakfast table on Sunday mornings.

"What? What things? What ficus? What are you talking about, Gram?"

"Why, what we discussed earlier, of course. Me moving back in. No time like the present, they say."

"They? Who's 'they'?" Let me at 'em. I wanted to kick their butt but good.

I glanced at the window. It was just beginning to get light outside. I cast a hurried look at my clock radio. Six-thirty. I needed to shake a leg or, if I wasn't careful, Shelby Lynne would be gnawing on my other one.

I threw off my blankets and hopped out of bed. Butch and Sundance pranced underfoot, eager to answer their respective calls of nature.

"Those dogs will have to stay outdoors, you know," Gram told me. "They're always underfoot. I'll be flat on my back faster than that old slut Abigail Winegardner. Besides, Hermione can't abide your dogs."

Uh, the feeling was mutual.

"Gram, can we talk about this later? I have to shower and get to work. Plus, I need to make a stop on the way." No way was I going to tackle a tough story without my java and pastries.

"Which job are you going to? Frank's Freeze? Bargain City?
Gazette?
"

"The paper," I said, opening my underwear drawer and hoping I had clean undies and bra. Sometimes I get a little behind with my laundry. I snared my last pair of bikinis--black ones
to
match my mood--and a bright red sports bra. "And I'm running late."

"We still haven't decided about the ficus."

Hurrying to the front door to let Butch and Sundance out, I told her, "We'll figure it out tonight." Along with how I'd convince her that moving in with me was not the girls-go-wild good time she seemed to think it was.

"You'll need to be a bit tidier, you know," Gram said, hot on my heels. "And we'll have to come to an understanding about having male friends over. Devise some kind of sign or signal to alert each other when we're entertaining. You know. Maybe one of them DO NOT DISTURB signs on the door. Or a big red heart."

"How about one of those bare-butted Cupids?" I joked with a snort.

"Oh, I like that."

I rolled my eyes. This move couldn't happen.

I jumped in the shower and loofahed up, quickly lathering my hair and rinsing off. I did a quick towel dry, donned my mismatched undies and hurried out of the bathroom and into my bedroom.

"Uh, what are you doing, Gram?" My grandma had her head and half her torso stuck inside my closet.

"I'm checking out your closet. To see if you have any clothes I might want to borrow. Roomies do that, you know--swap clothes. But, to tell you the truth, Tressa, I can't see anything in here I'd be interested in wearing. Everything's too tame. Except maybe this little number."

Gram pulled out a deep red lacy Victoria's Secret teddy that had gotten my attention on a shopping trip to the Mall of America a year ago. It had been marked how-low-can-you-go low. Optimist that I am, I figured an opportunity to wear it would present itself sometime before I was too fat, too wrinkled or too old to have the guts to put it on. Of course, given the fact that my seventysomething grandmother had her eye on it, I guessed the age factor was pretty much moot.

I pulled on a pair of gray hip-hugger slacks, a white T-shirt and a black zippered hoodie with white stripes down the arms, and pulled on black socks and a pair of black harness boots. I applied my makeup with my usual flair and pulled my hair into a ponytail at the back of my head, then nabbed a black Hawkeyes hat, putting it on my head and pulling my ponytail through the opening at the back. I grabbed my book bag, which also did duty as purse and makeup bag, and headed for the front door.

"What time will you be home?" My grandma stuck her head out the front door. "I'll put on a chicken!" I found myself feeling like a husband going off to work, leaving the little woman home to cook and clean.

"Don't wait up," I heard myself say. Man, was I losing it or what?

"I still don't see why you get first dibs on the chocolate bismarck," my surly associate mumbled.

"Maybe because I bought it," I said.

"Yeah, and you got that coconut one for me on purpose, didn't you?" Shelby said. "No one likes coconut sprinkled on their doughnuts. Everyone just pulls it off. You did it to get back at me. Admit it."

I had, but no way was I gonna let her know that. It was my low-risk way of saying, "Bite me."

"Shelby, Shelby, Shelby, I was in a hurry," I explained. "I didn't want to keep you waiting. There was a long line at the doughnut dispenser, so I just reached in and grabbed the first doughnuts I could get a hold of. It wasn't planned or anything. And once I'd pulled out that coconut-covered one in front of God and everybody, it wasn't as if I could just stick it back in again. Come on. Who'd want to buy a doughnut someone else has rejected?"

"If it was coconut-covered? Nobody would be dense enough to pull it out in the first place."

We'd been sitting in my car on the lane adjacent to the driveway of Holloway all for just over an hour, and instead of planning our next move, we'd spent the time haranguing each other over sweets neither of us needed.

"The van is still there," Shelby said. "Shouldn't we just go up and knock?"

That was my usual MO. I'm a seat-of-the-pants-let's-see-how-this-works kind of reporter. However, for some reason in this case, my trial-and-error, try-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink method of journalism didn't appeal as much as it usually did. Maybe because I really, really cared about looking like I knew what I was doing in front of the venerable Elizabeth Courtney Howard.

"Okay. And say what? 'I'm here about the coffin in the cellar. Do you have a permit to store bodies on the premises'?"

"That we are from the local newspaper and we'd heard that E. C. Howard was currently residing here, and wondered, since she's a local girl who made it big, whether she might be willing to break her silence of the last eighteen years and give her old hometown newspaper the mother of all interviews."

I had to hand it to Shelby. It sounded like a pretty good intro for a novice.

I picked up the binoculars my grandma had left behind in the hall closet when she'd made the move to the big house. She'd insisted she'd used them for bird-watching, but frankly, my gramma couldn't tell the difference between an eastern goldfinch and a purple martin. Plus, she'd been known to use them to read people's lips across a filled auditorium or at a church picnic, and, on at least one occasion, was caught spying on Abigail Winegardner, her longtime enemy.

The drapes were closed, but I could detect light behind them. I took that as a green light.

"Let's do it," I said, grabbing my bag and checking to make sure I had my digital camera and notepad and a writing utensil. "And let me handle the conversation. You are here solely as an observer. Okay?"

Shelby rolled her eyes. "Just nail this story. Otherwise..."

"I know. I know," I said. "There's always the
New Holland News
."

Shelby nodded. "And I bet Drew Van Vleet doesn't stick his confidential informant with the coconut-covered doughnut," she groused.

"For the love of God, just let it go, Shelby," I said. "Just let it go."

"Fine for you to say. You've got a chocolate-covered, creme-filled pastry sitting in your stomach." She heaved a heavy-duty sigh. "Can we go now?" she asked.

At the prospect of lassoing this story, I felt a certain excitement similar to the sweaty palms and numb nose I always felt before I competed in barrel-racing events. The slightly upset stomach and gotta-go-right-now nervousness that accompanied my somewhat episodic risk-taking. I raised my Styrofoam coffee cup in a toast. "Let's go make history, Shelby Lynne," I said.

She tapped her cup to mine, raised it to her lips and took several long successive gulps, draining it. She crushed the cup in one king-sized hand and tossed it over her shoulder and onto the floor of my backseat. "Let's do it!" she said.

"Hey, that isn't a wastebasket," I pointed out.

Shelby looked in the backseat and then over at me. "Are you sure?" she asked.

A few minutes later we stood beneath the overhang of the second-floor terrace, and I looked over at my current business associate who towered over me, her red hair and freckles standing out against the pale backdrop of her complexion like paprika on a deviled egg. See how I'm always making connections to food? I can't seem to help myself.

"Aren't you going to knock?" Shelby asked.

Was I?

I looked around for a doorbell like the one at the Addam's Family abode that sounded like a sick foghorn. I didn't locate one, but I did spot the door knocker and was pleasantly surprised to find a somewhat tarnished silver horse's head knocker rather than Jacob Marley's face staring back at me. I lifted a shaky hand to raise the knocker assembly, which was the bit for said silver horse. I brought the knocker down several times.

"Nobody home, I guess," I said. "I'd better get you to school."

"Try putting some stank on it," Shelby Lynne said, and grabbed hold of the horse's bit and slammed it down hard half a dozen times.

I raised an eyebrow. "Thanks."

The curtains at the door moved, and through a slit in the opening I saw an eye peek out at me. I couldn't help but think of Cousin Itt.

A few seconds passed, and the door finally opened. I held my breath. I heard Shelby Lynne's own intake of air beside me. It seemed both of us were waiting to see if we were about to come face-to-face with a legendary literary giant. And both of us feeling the same level of tension at the thought.

"May I help you?" The door opened wider, and I recognized the crate-carrying woman with the pageboy from last night.

Disappointed, I fumbled around in my bag, trying to locate my ID card.

"Uh, hello there," I said, first whipping out a half-filled sticker card good for a free sub sandwich when filled, followed by a half-exposed pink plastic-wrapped minipad. I gave up. "Hello. My name is Tressa Turner, and I work for the
Grandville Gazette
. This is my, uh, associate, Shelby Lynne Sawyer. We received information that former Grandville resident turned best-selling author Elizabeth Courtney Howard has taken up residence here at Haunt--Holloway Hall to attend to some family estate business. Naturally, this is big news, and the
Gazette
would love to have an opportunity to visit with Ms. Courtney Howard and do a special feature on this small-town girl who made it big."

I thought I'd done a pretty professional job of presenting my bona fides, but had to wonder when the woman's eyes got big and she got a look on her face like I do when I walk into the house and discover that one of my pooches has gotten sick and hurled on the floor. Always on the carpet, never the tile.

"Where did you get this information?" she asked, giving away nothing.

"We're reporters. It's what we do," Shelby Lynne piped up and I noted with an understated eye roll her mercurial rise in status from associate to reporter.

The black-haired woman seemed to consider her options for a moment, then stepped out of the house and onto the front porch, shutting the door behind her. "Do you have some identification?" she asked, and I bit back a teensy curse and fumbled in my bag until I located my press credentials. Okay, that's a pretty fancy term for a laminated picture ID card that made my driver's license photo look like a Glamour Shot.

"And you?"

The brunette motioned to Shelby Lynne, who whipped out a nicely laminated card that looked more legit than mine. The things these youngsters can do with a computer and printer these days.

The brunette looked from Shelby Lynne to me, and I got the feeling she was still contemplating her next course of action. I really thought a phone call to the sheriff's department was near the top of her list of viable options. Ugh. I'd had enough dealings with Knox County's finest to last more than nine lifetimes.