Little Ghost Lost (Destiny Bay Cozy Mysteries Book 5) (11 page)

“My favorite!” I said, giving her a hug. “How are you doing?”

“I’m fine.” She gave me a bright smile. “How’s your murder investigation?”

I hesitated. “Well…it’s not really
my
murder investigation and I’m not supposed to be speculating, but…I think things are stuck in a rut and that the police need to find a way to get a break in this case.” I grinned at her. “Every time Jill and I decide someone is definitely guilty, facts come in that totally dispute that. We’re feeling a bit superfluous at the moment.”

She laughed. “Poor babies. No one wants to listen to your solutions, huh?”

 
“Nope. And who could blame them?”
 

That made her laugh and I was glad. She had such an air of bearing a secret sorrow. I would have loved to erase all worries from her mind if I could. I helped fix dinner, cutting up the chicken and dredging the pieces in a light flour mixture before sautéing. Over the next twenty minutes I gave her the rundown on all we’d learned about the murder possibilities. Some of that made her laugh too.

Then she told me what she’d been doing all day, besides babysitting our resident ghost.
 

“I went to the library,” she said, “and talked to the archivist. I knew she was developing a history for the area that she wanted to publish eventually. So I thought she might have some information on the Pennington Mansion.”

“Hey, good thinking. I should have thought of that myself.”

“I actually wanted to find out whatever I could about Mandy—whether she was part of the family or what. How she died. What her family relationships were like.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “Nothing. Jean Kelly, the archivist, showed me where the file should have been. It was empty. She thinks maybe someone from the town council took it when Alexander Pennington died and the whole law suit began.”
 

“Oh sure. Sounds likely.”

“But you haven’t seen it?”

I shook my head.
 

“Jean says there should be a place holder giving information about who it’s loaned out to, but it wasn’t there. She does think she remembers something about a small child, though. So I’m dying to get my hands on it.”

I nodded. “I’ll go in first thing in the morning and see if I can find out who has it,” I said. “I’ll bet it’s right there in the office. Isn’t that crazy? It’s probably been there all this time. If I’d known what I was looking for, I’ll bet I’d have read it by now.”

I went to the spare bedroom to check on our guest ghost. It seemed she’d tired of the TV at last and was browsing through the books Bebe had in the little book case at the head of the bed. A ghost reading books. That was something I’d never seen before. I wasn’t even sure it was possible—or likely, but there she was, her little dog curled at her feet.
 

“Look Sparky,” she was saying, holding the book up for the dog to see. “Here’s a picture of a St. Bernard. Wouldn’t you like to meet him in a dark alley?”

Sparky barked with a worried look on his little face, and she laughed. “Oh never mind. He probably wouldn’t see you anyway,” she said, then looked up and noticed me.
 

“Hi,” she said brightly. “I love your Aunt Bebe. Can you tell her? I try but it doesn’t seem to get through to her.”

I marveled at the child. Could she be for real? She was so sweet, so unlike any ghost I’d ever known. But I promised her, and we talked about what she’d been doing all day. I had a feeling she was beginning to be ready to branch out and start to move around the area. And what then? Mischief? Or would she stay as sweet as she seemed?

I needed to talk to her about going back to the Pennington House, but I knew that would be a difficult conversation, so I held off and went back to the kitchen.
 

“Mandy wants me to tell you she loves you,” I told Bebe. “Just in case you were wondering.”

Bebe beamed, then looked surprised. “There it is again,” she said. “I keep thinking I hear a dog bark. Did you hear that?”

I stared at her. “The question is, did
you
really hear that? It was Sparky. Mandy’s little dog.”

“Oh.”
 

Before she had a chance to say anything else, there was a scramble of claws on tile and a furious howl as both cats, Sami, Bebe’s black cat and Silver, our adopted grey, came sailing into the kitchen as though the devil was after them.

Only it wasn’t the devil. It was Sparky, happily yipping at their heels and loving it.
 

“What on earth?”
 

We both dashed out of the way. I yanked open the kitchen door and the two cats were gone. I closed it again quickly and Sparky hit the brakes, jumping up a few times to try to see out the window at where the cats were going. Then he looked up at us and wagged his tail, looking very pleased with himself.
 

“Okay, what just happened here?” Bebe asked.
 

I looked at her and grinned. “Our big, brave cats just got skunked by a ghost dog. A very small ghost dog.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “But…but that can’t happen. Can it?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know about that. All I know is what I saw.” I searched her face. “You can’t see him?”

She glanced down and shook her head. “No. But I’m pretty sure I heard him.” Her eyes were full of hope as she met my gaze and it broke my heart. She might be hearing him, or she might be trying so hard that she thought she heard things she actually couldn’t. Maybe she felt him, the way she’d thought she felt Mandy earlier. Whatever.

We set the table and ate the orange chicken. Delicious! Bebe is such a good cook. We chatted and I thought of bringing up Captain Stone and his laments, but the right moment didn’t come up. We did the dishes, still chatting away like old friends. There were times when Bebe did seem like my oldest, “bestest” friend ever.
 

My phone rang. I picked it up. The call was from Jill and there was something in her voice that sent the hair up on the back of my neck right from the beginning.
 

“You’ll never guess,” she whispered into the phone. “Are you sitting down?”

“What is it?”

“Tom Hatchett is dead.”

Chapter Nine

“What?” I was reeling from that one.
 

“Yes. Somebody killed him.”

“Who? How do you know?”

“Celinda is here. She found the body. She wants our help. She thinks she’s got to hide.”

“Celinda?” My brain was spinning. “Who’s she running from? The murderer…or the cops?”

“I’ve been talking to her and you know what? I believe what she’s telling me. And I think she’s in danger. So if you let her come over and stay in your house….”

“What?”

“No, really Mele. Wait until you talk to her. She’s one scared little lady and I think we should help her.”

“Really? Then why not let her stay in your house?”

“We thought of that. But I have no way for her to hide her car. You’ve got that barn thing. She could pull in there and no one would ever know she was anywhere nearby.”

At first I thought this was absolutely crazy, but the more Jill talked, the more I began—begrudgingly—to think maybe she was right. I told Jill I would have to talk to Bebe and call her back.
 

“Okay, but hurry. I think I see Roy’s car pulling up into the parking lot. I’m going to hide Celinda in my office for now.”

Great. Just what I needed—another secret I would have to keep from Roy. Just the thing for a healthy relationship.

Bebe’s first reaction was a lot like mine.
 

“How can we have that woman come stay with us when they haven’t ruled her out as the murderer?”

“Listen,” I suggested, “let’s hear her out and then make up our minds. If it still seems risky, we can make up a bed for her in the barn.”

And so I called Jill and told her Celinda could come. When she arrived, I went out and showed her how to pull her car into the barn, then brought her into the kitchen. Bebe had a nice pot of tea and three cups ready to go.
 

“Oh,” Celinda sighed as she sat down at the kitchen table and reached for a tea cup. “What a day.”

Bebe and I exchanged a glance and I slipped down into a chair and leaned toward Celinda. “I don’t think I told you how sorry I am about what happened to your husband,” I said gingerly. “I know that was a devastating loss.”

She nodded and took a deep breath. “Yes. We had our ups and downs, but all in all, it was a good marriage while it lasted.”

“Uh…” I bit my lip, not sure how to begin. “So, about Tom Hatchett…”

Celinda flattened both palms on the table and looked like a woman who had just decided to take over a boring meeting and talk some sense into everyone. “Okay, here’s the deal. In a nutshell, as it were. Jerry was in Santa Barbara selling silver antiques. I was attending an art show in Cambria. At the last minute, before I left, Jerry gave me a call and said he was coming on home a day early. I went on to Cambria, but I was stewing. I had an ugly suspicion that he was planning to come back when he knew I wasn’t going to be there in order to have a tryst with Astrid.”

“Oh no,” said Bebe faintly, looking uncomfortable.
 

Celinda nodded. “It ate at me until I couldn’t stand it any longer. So I came back, determined to catch them together, determined to have it out with him once and for all. But…” Her voice broke. “But when I got there and walked into the library…there he was on the floor. Dead. I…I didn’t know what to do. I was in a panic. I was dreadfully upset by his death, of course, but there was also the fact that I’d come racing home in a jealous rage. How did that look? Not so good. I called…a friend and asked his advice. He told me to go back to Cambria as though nothing had happened. That we would all think more clearly in the morning. So…so I did.”

“Oh boy,” I muttered. The friend had to be my boss, Vance. That certainly wasn’t the best advice he could have come up with.
 

“Now I regret doing that, of course,” she said. “I should have known my nosy neighbor would see me coming and going. He keeps track of everyone on the block—takes pictures, keeps a notebook and jots down everything we do. And he let me know right after the detectives cleared out this morning that he’d seen me. He said he was perfectly willing to keep that quiet—as long as I forked over some dough.”

“Blackmail?” Bebe said, her eyes wide.
 

Celinda nodded. “You got it. I turned him down flat. I’ve been around the block enough times to know that going down that road is nothing but a nightmare in disguise. But I also knew that I was going to have to go in and tell the truth to the cops.” She shrugged. “So I did.”

“So you’ve talked to the police about it?” I asked, just wanting to make sure.
 

“Oh yeah. Even though it makes me look guilty as hell.” She shook her head. “I spent a long afternoon at the police station answering questions. They finally let me go, but I’m a ‘person of interest’ now.”

I nodded. That would seem to be the logical consequence.

“Do they have any idea who might really have killed Jerry?” I asked her, feeling a bit callous—but it had to be asked at some point.
 

She gave me a sharp look and said, “They don’t, but I do. I think Astrid did it. I think she and Jerry had a falling out, he told her to get lost, he turned away and she bashed him with that heavy old fireplace shovel.” Her eyes actually misted for a moment. “That thing was one of Jerry’s favorite tools. He loved that it had so much weight and heft. Now it’s killed him.”

I was shaking my head. “But Astrid has an alibi,” I noted.
 

She glared at me. “Oh sure. Some other guy she’s had on her string of suckers. He’ll probably say anything she asks him to.”

“You don’t think he’s credible?”

“Of course not. How the police can even pretend to believe that wild story I’ll never know.”

I frowned, thinking that over. “Maybe they’re pretending to believe him while they watch his actions,” I posited. “Hoping to keep him off guard.”

She groaned. “You’ve got more faith in them than I have.” Then her face changed. “Oh yeah, I forgot. You’re going with one of them, aren’t you?”

I ignored that. “Do you have a backup suspect, in case her alibi pans out?”

Her mouth tightened. “I did have one.”

“Oh?”

“Tom of course. Only now he’s dead too.”

Interesting.

“How about your friend Richard?” I said, and then I almost clamped my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant to say it. The emotion that flared behind her eyes when she heard it almost looked like fear. But it was a logical thought. After all, antiques had gone missing. Hadn’t they?

“That’s ridiculous,” she said hotly. “Richard and Jerry were business partners and close friends. Richard wouldn’t have done anything to hurt him.”

“Of course,” I murmured. “Sorry.”

Bebe poured her another cup of tea and asked, “So when did you find out about Tom?” To me it felt more like she was just trying to change the subject than anything else, but Celinda went with it immediately.

“When the police let me go, I went home and marched right over to Tom’s house to let him know what I thought of his snooping and snitching. And there he was, dead as a doornail, lying there in his own front yard, a bullethole in his chest.”

I winced. “Poor Tom. A bullet, huh?”

“Poor Tom! How about poor me? Now another man I had something against is a goner. It really does seem like someone is trying to frame me for something. Doesn’t it?”

“Hmm.” I thought it was interesting that she thought everything revolved around her, one way or another. After all, she wasn’t one of the dead guys. But I did have some sympathy. After all, that meant two people in close proximity to her were gone. Who was going to be next?

“So...did you call the police this time?”

She sighed. “I didn’t want to. I called my friend again and he said I should do it. So I did.”

“And?”

She shrugged. “They questioned me for another hour. What a waste of time. And when I demanded police protection, seeing as how I might be the next target of the killer, they told me to go stay in a hotel.” She looked outraged. “Can you imagine? A hotel? As if no one could find me that way. Hah!”