Save My Soul (2 page)

“Caroline!” Mimi’s arm shot up in a sudden wave as a leggy brunette with a mane of dark curls entered the coffee shop.

Caroline Johnson wasn’t the same person Anna had met years before. Her eyes looked drawn, worn around the edges, as if the life had been sucked out of her.

“You’ve met Anna, I’m sure,” Bitsy said when the woman reached their table.

Caroline’s eyes shifted nervously as she turned to Anna. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you. Your number isn’t listed yet, and I couldn’t come by the house.”

The Baker twins exchanged another of their cryptic glances.

“Of course you could have come by,” Anna said.

“Would you mind if we spoke privately?”

When they’d moved outside, Anna gestured toward the window. “They don’t mind being obvious about it, do they?”

Bitsy and Mimi were staring directly at them, trying to learn the fine art of lip-reading on the fly. But Caroline wasn’t listening. She was busy self-consciously twirling a strand of hair.

“I feel just awful. I never would have done it. We knew your father and we would never intentionally . . . I’m sure you’ll be able to find a buyer as long as you don’t make the mistake I did and talk too much about the occurrences.”

Anna gaped, trying to figure out what Caroline was babbling about, when it hit her. “I’m not selling the house.”

“Oh, but you have to! You can’t live there.”

“Caroline, traditionally people buy houses to live in them.”

“But you just can’t.” Her eyes were wide and just a tinge too caffeine-addled. “It started out little things, but the longer we lived there, the more apparent it became, like something was feeding off us. I had dreams . . . ”

Anna noted the redness that came to Caroline’s face as she trailed off, but chose not to comment.

“You see, we’re very religious people, and I don’t want to say . . . demon . . .but . . . Well, anyway, my daughter, Sara, was only seventeen. She’s in an institution now. I’m telling you the house is possessed. I should have burned the vile thing to the ground rather than let someone else buy it. But we needed the money.”

Anna shivered, but then quickly got herself together. She’d gone her whole adult life without believing in the supernatural. Why ruin that track record now?

She smiled kindly at Caroline to diffuse the situation. “I’m sure you believe something happened in the house, but I’m not superstitious. And I’m not willing to part with it now that I have it.”

The horn of a red sports car blared impatiently. “I have to go. Please consider what I’ve said. If something were to happen to you, I’d never forgive myself.” When the car rolled up to the curb, Caroline slid into the passenger side and was gone in a gust of hysteria.

Anna sipped her rapidly cooling coffee and stared after the car. She tried to remember if Caroline had been that high strung the last time they’d met. Definitely a woman who should prayerfully consider switching to decaf.

Anna’s mind wandered back to the Chinese food. There was no way in hell she was getting freaked by misplaced takeout. If Cece’s ghost stories were true, Beatrice was going to have to do a lot better than that. Maybe float the box around like it was being operated by a pulley system.

Back inside, there was a new addition to their table. Sandwiched between Bitsy and Mimi with a trapped expression on his face, was Marshal Crust. He smiled up at Anna with genuine relief.

She’d once had a crush on Marshal when she was a teenager, but she’d gotten over it. Now, it appeared he was finally noticing her existence. If his eyes’ refusal to wander far from her cleavage was any indication.

“Anna.” His voice was a little more breathy than was attractive for the average male.

“Marsh.” Well, this was getting off to a great start. If they’d hooked up at sixteen they surely would have set the world ablaze with their clever banter.

“Marshal is recently divorced.” Mimi couldn’t have been more obvious if she’d said hint, hint, wink, wink .

Anna smiled politely, wondering if Marshal had been more attractive in high school or if she’d been less discriminating. She remembered herself in high school, so she suspected the latter.

“We were thinking you two should go together to the Peach Festival this weekend,” Bitsy said, ever the little matchmaker.

The Peach Festival was the event of the year in Golatha Falls. Tragic, but true. It was a quaint little festival where everybody knew everybody. Anna was beginning to miss Atlanta, where nobody knew anybody and she could sit for five minutes without hearing: ‘Anna, my, how delightful it is to see you!’

Three faces turned expectantly toward hers as her inner monologue ran out of steam. “I hadn’t really planned on going.”

“But you have to.” Mimi’s lip jutted out into a pout that must have driven the men wild in her younger days. “Everybody’s dying to see you again.”

Anna could see she was going to lose the battle. Her powers of resistance failed her in the face of pouting old people. They were her kryptonite. She might be able to buy herself some peace until the weekend if she just caved now.

“I suppose I could find a few hours in my schedule.” As if my schedule isn’t TV, Chinese food, argue with the cat, surf the net , she thought.

“Splendid!” Bitsy said.

“I could meet you by the courthouse.” Marshal looked up at her from underneath thick, blond lashes, working the shy guy angle. Anna hated when men did that.

“That’d be great. Listen, I’d love to stay, but I’m not finished unpacking.” She took the Baker sisters’ smug smiles and nods as her cue to flee.

The moment she got home she set the security code, sank to the floor, and peered out the window. The sidewalk was empty of threats. Scarlett approached her, meowing and bitching and rubbing up against her legs. The cat’s nose turned up at the lingering smell of White Diamonds .

Great. In the space of two short weeks, Anna had managed to elevate old people and blind dates to exciting life events. Vince hadn’t been her long haul guy, but it didn’t mean it hadn’t been fun while it lasted. At least until he couldn’t commit and she was sharing him with half of Atlanta. She’d been his casual every other Friday girl.

It hadn’t been all bad. He’d included her in his social circle. She’d had a job. Maybe working in the mail room of the Journal-Constitution wasn’t the height of glamor, but it was something. She had no idea what she was going to do with herself now. Get a job? Join committees?

Her brow scrunched at the idea of being one of those bored town committee women arguing over floats for the annual Christmas parade. Then a part of Anna’s ten-year-old self came through as she imagined finding prince charming, having a whole passel of kids, and throwing fabulous parties.

Snap out of it. Don’t go there. The town might be having an odd effect on her, but she wasn’t about to go all damsel-y. She wasn’t waiting for a man to come along and make her life complete. Gag me. It was the house. It was possessed with Margaret Mitchell’s ghost.

Anna picked herself up off the floor and settled onto the sofa with her laptop. Within moments she was inside the archives of the Golatha Falls Gazette . She wondered if they ever just printed an edition that said, “Sorry kids, no news today . . . check back tomorrow.”

The Gazette sported a general archive, as well as archives for categories of special interest. The sun was dipping behind the peach trees when she found a web of interconnected links on her house. Leave it to the fine journalists of Golatha Falls to think ghost stories were newsworthy.

The paper seemed to have a sort of obsession with the house, archiving articles on it far past what they’d saved and uploaded to the Internet for any other topic. The oldest article was dated August 18th, 1959. A beautiful fair-haired girl with bright eyes stared back at her from a black and white photograph. The caption read: “Beatrice Stone found dead in her home the morning of August 17th, circumstances unknown. Foul play suspected.” Anna felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up.

Beatrice had been found in the parlor, which Anna suspected was the room now known as the living room. Where she was sitting. Lovely. She clicked to the next link. September 26th, 1969. The article rambled on about how the Stone Estate had sat empty for several years. A few neighbors reported hearing female screams at night. Blah blah blah. Weird occurrences, blah blah.

For a ghost, Beatrice was boring. No wonder Anna hadn’t remembered the stories. Clicking through several links brought more of the same until she got to the Johnsons. After trying unsuccessfully to exorcise what they believed to be a demon, they’d moved. A link to an interview transcript showed Caroline Johnson using the phrase just awful to an extent that should have been punishable by law.

Anna closed the browser window. Pretty wimpy for a ghost story. She flipped on the television and heard a crash in the kitchen.

“Damn cat.”

“Mrarrrr?”

Anna’s eyes shot to the overstuffed armchair where the cat was regally sprawled. She got up and edged toward the kitchen, her heart hammering in her chest so fast she couldn’t count the beats.

I’m not superstitious. I don’t believe in ghosts.

As she inched forward, her skin crawled, and it occurred to her that not only was she being silly thinking something supernatural was at work, but she hadn’t considered the very real danger of a possible flesh and blood intruder.

Her gaze darted around the room until she spotted her keys and pepper spray in the candy dish on the table. She held her breath while she tiptoed over and snatched them, then returned, holding the spray at the ready as she entered the kitchen.

Shards of blue glass from her favorite cereal bowl were scattered across the tile. She distinctly remembered placing that bowl in the back of the cabinet. Her last logical explanation was ripped to shreds when she looked up to see the panel by the back door showing the security system still armed.

Anna was wasted as an heiress. She should have been in surveillance. Or stalking. She’d quickly determined that Bitsy and Mimi started their morning walks at precisely 9:45 am. Soon after, Sir Franklin, the perfumed poodle, relieved himself in Mr. and Mrs. Sedgewick’s rhododendrons. Depending on the dog’s diet the night before, the three were passing in front of Anna’s house between 10:00 a.m. and 10:05.

The doorbell rang as the grandfather clock began to chime out the dreaded hour. Anna assumed crash position. Whoever was on the other side was repeatedly stabbing the bell like an impatient sugar-high child on Halloween.

A full minute passed before she gathered the courage to peer out the front window. She was relieved to find a perky blonde with a pixie cut. No blue hair or poodles visible for miles. She’d forgotten she’d asked a friend to come by. Anna flung the door open.

“Tam, get in the house!” she hissed.

“Um, okay.” Tam glanced around her as if she expected to find snipers hiding out in the peach trees. “Is there some special reason we’re reenacting a Charlie’s Angels episode?”

“The blue-hair brigade will be by here any minute. Oh wait. On second thought, go hide your car around back. If they think I have company, they’ll know I’m home.”

Tam quirked an eyebrow. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit over the top on this Bitsy and Mimi thing?”

Anna thought maybe her friend didn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. “They set me up with Marshal Crust for the festival. These women are a force of nature. God only knows what other chaos they can create between now and then.”

Tam shrugged but went to move the car. When she returned, Anna was at the kitchen table reading The Wall Street Journal and working on her second cup of coffee.

“I thought you had a crush on Marshal.”

Anna shot her friend a look intended to convey exasperation and disgust. “When I was sixteen. I’m a grown-up now.”

“Yes, because grown-ups always insist their friends engage in covert car hiding missions to avoid the elderly.”

“Shut up,” Anna said, moving the coffee mug to her lips to hide the smile. She hadn’t seen Tam in years, yet they’d picked up as if they’d never been separated.

“You got cream and sugar?”

Anna waved a hand indicating the side pantry. “I still think you’re a sissy for not drinking it black.”

“I’m just going to let that slide on by.” Tam poured her coffee then hefted two heavy-duty garbage bags onto the island counter top. “You really do have the best kitchen for this. If you hadn’t said yes, I had no idea where I was going to make this stuff.”

“So the truth comes out. You’re using me for my kitchen.”

Tam smirked. “Yes, our entire friendship has been building to this moment.”

Anna watched as Tam pulled out huge blocks of white wax in plastic wrapping along with wicks, molds, dyes, fragrance vials, and decorative paper.

“This looks potentially complex.” She was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole candle-making enterprise. The most crafty thing she’d ever done was order a crochet magazine for a charity drive. She still didn’t know how to crochet.

“You’ll get the hang of it. I’ll start you out dipping tapers. A trained monkey could do it.” Tam pulled out several pots and metal containers, meat thermometers, and two hammers. “This is the fun part.” She tossed the slabs of wax onto the floor and started vigorously beating one.