Nine Lives: A Lily Dale Mystery (7 page)

“How do you know he was a pirate?”

“Because he had on a long pirate coat, and it was blowing around his legs in the wind, and he was carrying treasure.”

“Is there any way it wasn’t a pirate? Maybe it was Mrs. Gatto you saw instead? Maybe she was carrying something out onto the pier?” Bella asks, hoping, praying she wasn’t the object being carried, because that would mean . . .

“Mrs. Gatto?”

“Leona,” Odelia clarifies. “Was Leona the person walking on the pier? Could it have been a woman? Maybe wearing a nightgown instead of a pirate coat?”

Jiffy shakes his head stubbornly. “No. It was a black pirate coat.”

“So you’re sure it was a man?”

“Pirates are men,” he informs Odelia, as if everyone knows that. “Ladies are
wenches.
”

Under different circumstances, Bella might have grinned at that comment. As it is, she can only edge a little closer to her son, again resting a protective hand on his shoulder.

“By the way, it wasn’t Leona,” Jiffy goes on. “My mom said Leona crossed over.”

Odelia hesitates. “Did she tell you what happened to her?”

“She said she was probably sick. She was an old lady, you know. Older than you, even.” Jiffy pauses and then glances down at Odelia’s cast. “You’re not going to die too, are you?”

“Not if I can help it.” She ruffles Jiffy’s hair. “Why don’t you two run over to my house and get a couple of Popsicles from the freezer? The doors are unlocked.”

“Yay! I get grape!” Jiffy is already making a run for it.

“I get cherry!”

“Wait,” Bella squeezes Max’s shoulder, holding him in place. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“Yes! I want a Popsicle!” Her son—her sweet, obedient child—suddenly sounds like the petulant toddler he never was or the surly adolescent he may one day become.

“We can go with you,” she offers, afraid to let him out of her sight.

“By the time I can make it past the apple tree, they’ll have been to my kitchen and back and finished their Popsicles,” Odelia points out. “They’ll be fine. Truly. I promise.”

She may be a psychic,
Bella thinks,
but she’s not a mother.

Then again, maybe she is—or rather, was. She did mention a granddaughter.

But she’s not Max’s mother. In the wake of Jiffy’s pirate tale, it’s up to Bella to assess what is and isn’t safe around here.

Still . . .

The house
is
right over there. And if the boys go, she and Odelia will have a chance to discuss what Jiffy told them. Which is the whole point of the Popsicle offer.

“Go ahead.” She releases her hold on Max’s shoulder, calling after him, “But come right back!”

As soon as the boys are beyond earshot, Odelia turns to her. “I’m sorry about that.”

“It’s okay. I’m just—I worry about him. It’s a strange place.”
And getting stranger by the second.

As if to second the thought, Chance meows loudly, pacing restlessly along the grassy edge of the pier, staring out at the water.

“Like I said, it’s safe.”

“Except that there are pirates roaming around at night.” Bella shakes her head, not daring to voice the terrible possibility flitting in her brain like the butterfly refusing to alight on a ruffly petunia. “What do you think that was all about?”

“I’m concerned. I thought it was about Chance the Cat.”

At the sound of her name, the cat stops pacing and turns toward them with an expectant meow. Odelia bends and extends her hand. The cat comes over, nuzzling her face against Odelia’s fingers and rubbing against her legs.

“You thought
what
was about Chance?” Bella asks, confused. “The pirate?”

“Leona’s restlessness. I’ve been aware of it ever since she passed on, but I thought she was upset about the cat going missing. The disquiet should have subsided last night when you brought her back home, but it seems even stronger. And every time I look at that spot . . .”

Bella follows her gaze toward the pier and the placid waters beyond.

Somewhere, bells are tinkling, clanging . . .

She turns toward the wind chimes in the tree. They dangle motionlessly from the branch—not a hint of breeze to stir the silvery tubes or even rustle the leaves above.

“Do you hear that?” she asks Odelia.

“Hear what?”

Poised, Bella listens.

The chiming seems to have stopped abruptly. The only sound is the hum of a distant lawnmower and the faint splashing of kids in the lake. Then a screen door creaks and slams: Max and Jiffy heading into Odelia’s house next door. They’ll be back momentarily.

She frowns. “I don’t know . . . I guess I was hearing things.”

“It happens.”

Unsettled by Odelia’s knowing expression—along with everything else—Bella gets the conversation back on track. “What do you mean about Leona? About her being restless. Do you mean her ghost?”

“I prefer
Spirit,
but yes. Her energy is troubled. Some people are fretful in life, but that wasn’t Leona. She was laid back during her
time on this plane, but not where she is now. With her cat home safely and her guesthouse in good hands, I’d expect her to find peace.”

“Can you ask her what’s bothering her?”

Odelia offers a faint smile. “It doesn’t quite work like that. It’s not like picking up a phone and placing a call to whomever we want to speak to.”

“How does it work, then?” she asks, thinking not just of Leona but of Sam. “I mean, when you contact the dead . . . or they contact you.”

“That depends on the situation. We all have our own unique process. If you’re interested in learning more about Spiritualism, there’s a seminar tomor—”

“No, that’s all right,” she says quickly. “I was just wondering about Leona. Is she . . . here with us right now?”

“I don’t feel her energy at the moment.”

“When you do feel her, or when you did feel her, how did you know she was restless?”

“Because she allows me to feel what she feels. I receive her energy. That’s what mediums do.”

“Can you talk to them, then? To, you know . . .”

“Spirit.”

“Right. To Spirit.” The singular tense feels odd on her tongue. “Can they . . . can it—Spirit—tell you things?”

“Yes. Sometimes we hear directly from the soul in question. Sometimes we receive messages through our guides.”

“Your spirit guides.” Bella recalls her mentioning them last night. “Who are they, exactly?
What
are they?”

“They’re highly evolved entities who offer enlightenment and protection.”

“Is Leona a spirit guide, then?”

“Oh, no! At least not yet, and certainly not to me,” Odelia explains—sort of.

“How do you know that?”

“Because I believe our guides exist on a higher realm, and they’re assigned to each of us before we’re born. Their job is to see us through our earthly mission. Some of my guides never even existed
in a physical form, and others did, though not necessarily human form, and certainly not in my lifetime.”

Bella is trying to understand, really she is. But there’s a lot to grasp here, and she feels like Max, with his incessant questions. “What do you mean, not human form?”

“One of my guides is a great white hawk. Another is a Native American maiden. She tells me I was her husband in another lifetime.”

Okay, so now we’re talking about reincarnation. Perfect. Next thing you know, she’ll be telling me about dragons and time travel.

“You were a man?”

“According to my past-life regression, I’ve been a man, a woman, and a number of different creatures.”

Right. Here come the dragons.

“How many . . . past lives have you had?”

“Eight that I know about so far. It’s fascinating stuff. Some of it makes perfect sense. I’ve always been an astronomy buff, and I recently found out that I was once part of Pickering’s Harem. I don’t suppose you know what that is?”

“I do, actually.” As a middle school science teacher, she’s created entire lesson plans based on the group of women who collected astronomical data for the famous nineteenth-century physicist Edward Charles Pickering.

“I’m impressed,” Odelia says. “Maybe we worked together at the Harvard Observatory. I was there from 1895 until just after the turn of the century?” She phrases it like a casual question—as if asking Bella whether they might have been simultaneously shopping at the local mall without having run into each other.

Bemused and amused, Bella shakes her head, and Odelia forges on.

“Some of my past lives make no sense at all, though. For example, I was once a doe. A mule would seem exactly right, but a doe?”

“What do you mean?”

“Let’s face it, I’m not the most graceful gal around. And I’m very stubborn. My ex-husband may even have called me an ass now and then. Maybe
he
was the psychic. He was certainly an ass.”

Bella can’t help but laugh at that. Nor can she help but find Odelia as lovable as she is kooky. As much as she wants to believe the woman is off her rocker, she seems utterly earnest.

Not that that means anything,
Bella reminds herself.
Just because she believes in all this crazy stuff doesn’t mean it’s real. She might as well be Max talking about the tooth fairy.

“The thing is, Odelia . . .” She pauses, choosing her words carefully. “What if it wasn’t an accident after all? Leona, I mean. What if Jiffy really did see someone out here on the pier that night?”

She waits for Odelia to assure her that wasn’t the case, that the boy was merely dreaming or that he makes up stories all the time.

“He may have seen someone,” Odelia says quietly, staring again over the water, “or he may have had a vision.”

“Wait, is he . . . he’s psychic, too? But . . . he’s just a little kid.”

“Children are often far more open to spiritual experiences. Unlike adults, they haven’t yet fully learned what they’re supposed to see and feel—and what they aren’t,” she adds with a wry smile. “His mother and his aunt are both mediums.”

“So . . . you mean it runs in families?”

“It certainly runs in mine. I never realized until after she’d passed that my daughter Stephanie was gifted, but her daughter—my granddaughter, Calla—certainly is.”

“She’s a medium, too?” she asks, wondering what happened to Stephanie. Odelia’s tone is matter-of-fact, but there’s a hint of sorrow in her expression.

“It’s not her career. She just published her first novel,” she says proudly.

“But she’s spiritually gifted, like you are?”

At Odelia’s nod, she wonders how that works—especially for a young professional woman. Does Calla chat with dead people in her spare time, like a hobby, or . . . or more like a bizarre extension of her social life?

“Some of us may be more perceptive than others,” Odelia tells her, “but anyone is capable of developing the ability to communicate with Spirit.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think of it this way: Some people are born with extraordinary musical talent or natural athletic ability. We all can’t be virtuosos or sports heroes, but just about anyone can learn to play the piano or catch a baseball, right? The key lies in willingness and practice.”

“So you’re saying. . .
I
can talk to the dead?” Seeing Odelia’s expression, she amends, “Communicate with Spirit. I can do that?”

“Is it something you want to learn to do?”

Absolutely not.

Unless it’s Sam, in which case . . .

“No,” she tells Odelia, her thoughts still muddled from the crash course in mediumship. “I don’t think I . . . no.”

“Maybe you’ll change your mind.”

I won’t.

Time to steer the subject back on track. “Can you ask your spirit guides about Leona if you can’t reach Leona herself?”

“That depends. I can ask, but keep in mind that our questions aren’t always answered in a way we might understand or expect. Spirit gives us what we need to know.”

As Bella digests that, the screen door creaks and slams again. The boys are coming back.

“We’ll talk about this later,” Odelia tells her.

Later . . . after what? After she’s asked Spirit?

Bella watches Max and Jiffy running toward them clutching Popsicles, carefree in the sunshine.

Forget Spirit. Forget later.

Forget everything for a change—everything but this moment and the fact that her son is smiling and he’s made a new friend.

After the Popsicle break, Odelia leaves to get ready for a Mediums’ League meeting—whatever that is—and sends Jiffy home to check in with his mom.

Lost in thought, Bella heads inside with Max, accompanied by Chance.

Fate may have handed her a free place to stay and a way to pay for the car repair, but a few crucial details seem to have escaped her when she agreed to help run the guesthouse—or rather, to
run
the guesthouse . . .

Wow—what the heck am I doing running a guesthouse?

The more she mulls over the curious turn of events, the more conflicted she feels. One moment, it seems to make perfect sense; the next, it makes no sense whatsoever.

Stuck and outa luck.

Having her son share a roof with a houseful of strangers wouldn’t be an appealing prospect under ordinary circumstances, but in the wake of Jiffy’s pirate tale—

No. Don’t even think about that.

The old pipes groan loudly as she turns the kitchen faucet so that Max can wash the red stickiness from his hands.

“It sounds like home,” he says contentedly, stretching to reach the sink.

“Hmm?”

“The sink. It used to do that at home, too. I like it. This place smells like home, too, and it even kind of looks like it.”

Yes. There’s no denying that the house offers happy reminders of the one they left behind. If Bella could only set aside the nagging worry that something isn’t quite right around here . . .

“Max, listen, I want you to sleep in the Rose Room tonight, okay?”

“No! That’s your room. The Train Room is our room.”

Our.
He’s referring, of course, to Chance.

“If we stay here through the weekend, you’ll have to share with me. There’s plenty of room.”

“For all three of us?”

She eyes the cat, who eyes her right back, reclining on the mat in front of the sink beside her son’s sneakered tiptoes.

“Sure,” Bella agrees. After all, it’s only a few nights.

“And the kittens, too?”

“Kittens?”

“Chance the Cat’s. There’s going to be seven of them. Maybe even eight.”

“That’s a lot of kittens,” she points out with a smile, turning off the tap and handing Max a towel. “And they’re not here yet, so . . .”

“They’re coming tomorrow, and they’ll need to sleep with their mommy, and she needs to sleep with me, so if I need to sleep with you . . .” Max shrugs, drying his hands. Clearly, it’s a done deal.

“I don’t know if they’re coming that soon, sweetie.”

“They are. Tomorrow.”

“Well, then, we’ll figure it out when they get here. For now, Chance can sleep with us. Okay?”

“As long as the kittens can stay, too.”

She shrugs and agrees. Most likely, she and Max will be long gone by the time the kittens arrive, and if they’re not, then . . .

Then it looks like I’ll have a small boy and a large cat and seven or eight kittens in my bed.

“But you don’t have to worry about the tooth fairy tomorrow or the next day. My tooth isn’t even going to fall out until the Fourth of July.”

“Well, that’s good. The tooth fairy might push us over crowd capacity.” She bends over and gives him a quick hug. His hair desperately needs a good trim, she notices. Millicent is bound to comment.

Sam was the one who always took Max to the barber. They’d go together, on Saturday mornings, and come back freshly shorn after a pit stop for burgers and French fries.

Since then, Bella has only had Max’s hair cut once or twice, at her own seldom-visited salon. She couldn’t bear to bring him alone to the barbershop, where they’d ask about Sam.

She pats Max’s shaggy hair. “Thanks, kiddo.”

“For what?”

“For always making me smile and for being resilient.”

“What does—?”

“It means you’re going with the flow. You know, not complaining about things.”

“I like it here,” he informs her with a shrug. “Don’t you?”

“Sure.”

Now that that’s settled, she sends Max upstairs to move his things into the Rose Room. As she waits for a cup of tea to steep, she tries to talk herself into calling her mother-in-law but can’t quite bring herself to pick up the phone just yet.

Instead, she turns her attention to the other detail that escaped her when she said yes to running Valley View Manor for a few days.

“This is for breakfast,” Odelia had said earlier, handing her an envelope of cash.

“What do you mean?”

“For the guests. You’ll have to feed them in the morning.”

“Feed them? You mean . . . I guess I didn’t realize I’d be cooking for them.”

“Oh, you don’t have to cook. It’s just continental breakfast—cereal, fruit, maybe some bagels or muffins if you feel like baking.”

She doesn’t. She used to bake cakes and cookies when Sam was alive. Max would help her, though his help mainly consisted of asking questions and licking the bowl.

But it’s no big deal, Bella assures herself as she surveys the contents of the refrigerator and cabinets, making a list of what she’ll need to buy. Anyone can make coffee and put out cereal and pastries, right?

But what kind of cereal?
she wonders, dunking the tea bag into the boiling water.
How many pastries? Where—

Her thoughts are interrupted by a loud knocking on the front door.

It must be another guest. According to Leona’s painstakingly notated reservations file, another couple should be checking in today. Their names are Karl and Helen Adabner, and they’re from Iowa. There are a couple of check marks by their names—whatever that signifies. Leona’s handwritten shorthand isn’t always clear.

Earlier, Bella noted what looked like the word
frumpy
or
fussy
or
prissy
—or maybe
hussy?
—jotted in the margin beside another guest’s name. When the exceedingly prim woman, a bespectacled blonde named Bonnie Barrington, checked into the Teacup Room, Bella realized the first three adjectives definitely applied. She entertained herself imagining that the unlikely fourth might, as well.

Prepared to welcome Karl and Helen Adabner, she reaches for the doorknob just as someone jiggles it from the other side. A female voice floats through the screen. “Bloody
hell!
”

Bella opens the door to a middle-aged woman wearing a flowered green-and-yellow dress, ballerina flats, and a straw sunhat. A pair of salt-and-peppery braids poke from beneath the brim, draped over her shoulders, with the tip of each wrapped in a bright scrunchy that exactly matches the fabric of her dress. The few stretches of skin she’s allowed herself to expose are as pale as the porch trim and just as spindly.

“The door was locked,” she announces.

Bella—who locked it—is taken aback by her accusatory expression. “Didn’t you get a key when you checked in?”

“I’m not a guest, luv. I’m Pandora Feeney.”

Judging by her tone—and expectant pause—that information should mean something to Bella.

It doesn’t.

“It’s nice to meet you. I’m Isabella Jordan.”

Pandora extends her pasty hand—not to shake Bella’s but to clasp it tightly. She closes her eyes and bows her head, murmuring something.

“Pardon?” Bella attempts to pull away, but the woman grasps her fingers.

“Shh! Shh!”

For a long moment, Bella stands awkwardly holding hands with her.

Then, abruptly, Pandora lets go. Her eyes snap open and she nods. “It’s all right. You’re supposed to be here.”

Yes, I am. But what about you?
Bella wants to ask as the stranger brushes past her, into the entry hall.

Spotting the mug in Bella’s hand, she shakes her head in dismay.

“What’s the matter?”

“For one thing, I’ll have to teach you how to brew a proper cup of leaf tea. For another, Leona never locked that door during the day.”

Maybe she should have.

Bella doesn’t say that aloud, only, “The guests”—
which
you
are
not,
lady—
“get deadbolt keys when they arrive.”

“Yes, and I’m quite certain I must have one somewhere. It’s a good thing Leona never bothered to change the locks, isn’t it?” Pandora strolls across the room to glance at the open guest register on the table with an almost proprietary air.

Apparently, Leona wasn’t diligent about getting the keys back from prior visitors. Does that mean there are other strangers out there who can get past the deadbolt?

It’s bad enough that a hotel in this day and age relies on metal keys in the first place. But Valley View Manor is, like the town itself, a throwback to an old-fashioned time when people couldn’t pop into the nearest Home Depot and get a key copied.

Or when you trusted people enough that they wouldn’t come in uninvited even if they had the means.

The thought is unsettling enough that Bella forgets, momentarily, to be irritated by Pandora Feeney as she helps herself to a handful of M&M’s from the bowl beside the guest book.

She notices that it needs to be refilled—one more thing to add to the shopping list, as soon as this woman leaves, which . . .

When are you leaving? What are you doing here? Who are you, anyway?

“So you’ve stayed here before?” she asks Pandora, and the question is met with a buoyant chuckle.

“I ‘stayed here’ for years, luv. After all, it was my house.”

“You owned it?”

“My ex-husband did—as much as one can ‘own’ anything here, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, I’d forgotten—you’ve scarcely been in town twenty-four hours. I presume no one bothered to tell you how things work here?” Her smile isn’t entirely condescending, but it’s close.

“I’m pretty much in the dark”—
and probably better off that way
—“but I’m sure you wouldn’t mind enlightening me.”

As luck would have it—
go figure
—Pandora wouldn’t mind at all.

She informs Bella that all the land in the Dale is owned by the Spiritualist Assembly, which, she painstakingly explains with the air of a benevolent guru addressing a dullard, is a religious organization made up of mediums and healers. Only their members can obtain property leaseholds.

“So you’re saying that I couldn’t buy a house in Lily Dale if I wanted to?”
And if I wasn’t flat broke?

“
Do
you want to?” Pandora’s expression betrays a potent blend of surprise and dismay.

“No. It’s a rhetorical question.”

“Right, then . . . are you a Spiritualist, Isabella?”

She shakes her head, though Pandora already seems to know that—along with a lot of other details about her.

“Then you, my darling, cannot buy a house in the Dale,” Pandora informs her tidily. “Just as
I
couldn’t have bought this house back when I met my ex-husband. He bought it and left it to me to strip the ghastly old paint and wallpaper and tear out acres of frightful carpet. I was the one who sanded the bloody floors and restored the woodwork. Do you see that bay window in the parlor?”

Bella follows the direction where she’s pointing.

“I made the cushions with my own two hands. The other ones as well. And the custom draperies in every room.”

“That’s a lot of work,” Bella murmurs.

“It was a labor of love. I do love to sew—I made these,” she adds, gesturing at her dress and hair accessories.

Bella politely compliments the ensemble but can’t help wondering if she used leftover curtain fabric.

“The point is, I was the one who made this decrepit rooming house into a home. And for most of the marriage, I was the one who lived here. Quite alone, I might add.” She pauses—for effect? For comment?

“I’m sorry.” Bella watches her run her fingertips along the dark wooden molding framing the archway between the hall and the parlor.

“It was a long time ago, luv. Naturally, the wanker got the house in the divorce proceedings, then sold it off to someone who wanted to turn it back into a boarding house.”

“Guesthouse.” It’s an important distinction, as far as she’s concerned.

Pandora ignores her, obviously not sharing her regard for semantics. “He did it just to spite me. But I got the last laugh, didn’t I? He’s long gone.”

“Did he . . .” Bella reaches for the proper Lily Dale lingo, settling on, “cross over?”

Pandora responds with a delighted laugh. “He ‘crossed over’ the continent to Hollywood. That’s where he lives now, with his third wife. He’s Orville Holmes,” she adds.

Clearly, the name should mean something to Bella, who’s growing weary of these significant pauses that make her feel as though she’s missing something—weary of Pandora herself, really, who chatters on:

“It was a beastly divorce, but it doesn’t matter in the end. I’ve a house of my very own right here in the Dale.”

“Wait—so you
are
a Spiritualist?”

“I have been for years. But don’t
you
go getting ideas about it, because it’s not something just anyone can do.”

Bella—who isn’t by any means getting ideas—feels compelled to mention, “Odelia Lauder told me that anyone can learn to communicate with the dead.”

“She did, did she?” Pandora’s eyes narrow shrewdly. “Then you
are
considering—”

“No! We were just talking about how it works.”

“Right. Just be aware that if you’re going to become a medium registered here in Lily Dale—”

“I’m not.”

“—you must be prepared to study for years and pass a series of tests. Which I did, with flying colors.”

“That’s great. Good for you.”

Now that we’ve established that you’re quite the sensation . . . why the heck are you in this house, and when are you going to leave?

As Pandora prattles on, telling her the entire history of the house, Bella makes a point of looking at her watch. Her visitor refuses to take the hint, telling her about the people who had died here a hundred years ago in the Spanish influenza epidemic and about a bootleg-running scandal a decade later.

“This is all fascinating,” Bella finally manages to break in. “Thanks for sharing. It was so nice to meet you . . .”

“And you as well, love.”

Making no move to go, Pandora wishes Bella luck getting the part for her car and mentions how lovely it is that her son has been playing with Jiffy Arden.