Treasured Legacies (A Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery) (13 page)

Mary entered Union Dairy armed with a healthy craving for
dark chocolate and some more information on Erika.
 
It was the middle of the afternoon and school
was in session, so the restaurant was nearly empty.
 
She walked over to the counter and was
greeted by a college-aged girl.

“Hi, what can I get you?” she asked.

“Dark chocolate,” Mary said.

“Okay, we have dark chocolate with pieces of coconut candy
bars, dark chocolate with pieces of brownie, dark chocolate with bits of
semi-sweet dark chocolate chips and dark chocolate with chocolate-covered
raspberries. Which one would you like?”

“You’re kidding me, right?” Mary asked. “I have to choose?”

The girl smiled and shook her head. “No, actually, I can put
a scoop of each into these small cardboard containers that fit perfectly into
your freezer.
 
Then you can try them all
and not feel like you are overdoing it.”

Mary looked at the small six ounce containers and quickly
calculated how many could fit in the small freezer section of her office
refrigerator. “Okay, I’ll take three containers of each,” she said with a
smile.

“You want twelve in all?” the girl asked, trying to hide her
astonishment.

Mary nodded. “Yes, twelve in all,” she answered.

The girl looked over to the stack of containers. “We’re down
to our last five,” she said. “I need to run back to the storeroom for the rest.
I’ll be back in a minute.”

“Take your time,” Mary replied.

“You should have asked for a taste of them,” a small voice
next to her said.

Mary turned and looked down at Brandon.

“Hi,” she said. “That’s a great idea; I’ll have to use it
next time.”

“My mom and I used to get tastes all the time,” he said. “We
would have a contest to see the best taste combination.”

“What was the best?” Mary asked.

“I liked the bubble gum, cookie dough and Rocky Road taste,”
he said. “Mom liked the chocolate, cheesecake and strawberry taste.”

“Oh, I’m going to have to go with your mom’s choice,” she
said.

Brandon glanced around. “Have you found her yet?” he asked.
“I’m still looking.”

Mary took a quick breath as tears stung her eyes. “No, I’m
sorry, Brandon, I haven’t,” she said. “Maybe you could give me some clues that
would help me out.”

“Clues?” he asked with a wide smile.
“Like
in Blue’s Clues?”
 
Naming the popular children’s show.

“Just like that,” Mary said, glancing around just to be sure
they were still alone.

“Okay,” Brandon said. “Let me think.”

She smiled to herself as she watched the little boy screw up
his face in concentration. Finally he looked up with a smile. “I kind of
remember a big building,” he said. “We went there a lot. And after, we would
come here.”

“A big building?”
Mary asked. “Like
a church or the library?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head and chewing his lower lip as
he thought. “They listened to my heart and tapped my knee with a hammer.”

“The hospital?”
Mary asked. “You
used to go with your mom to the hospital.”

“Yes,” he said. “You got the clue. Now you can find my mom.”

Mary heard the returning footsteps of the waitress. “Okay, Brandon,
I’ll keep looking and let you know.”

“Thanks,” he said with a brilliant smile. “Thanks a lot.”

Josh Johnson’s office was in the Stewart Centre building on Douglas
Street.
 
The building was the only
high-rise in Freeport and with a total of twelve floors; it stood well above
the other structures in the downtown.
 
Mary took the elevator up to the seventh floor and stepped out onto the
carpeted lobby.
 
She scanned the small
marque on the wall in front of the elevators and found that Johnson Enterprises
was located in Suite 705.
  
Turning up
the hall, she quickly found the room and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” a man’s voice responded and Mary opened the door
and let herself in.
 

Her jaw nearly dropped when the man behind the desk stood
and greeted her. He looked just like Dale. But Dale not injured and in the
flesh.

“Are you okay?” Josh asked, coming around his desk quickly when
he saw the surprise on Mary’s face.

She shook her head. “I’m so sorry,” she said, slightly
embarrassed by her reaction. “It’s just that you look so much like your father,
you surprised me.”

“No one’s compared me to my dad in years,” he said softly,
almost to himself.

After a quick moment, he regained his focus and smiled
politely at her. “What can I do to help you?” he asked. “You said something
about the house?”

Sitting down, Mary pulled the lien document from her
briefcase and handed it to him.
 
He reviewed
it, crossing back around to the other side of his desk and sat down slowly.

“I’m surprised to see this,” he said, still studying the
paper. “I know the work was completed and paid for.
 
Have you contacted Rogers Construction?”

“No, I didn’t,” she replied. “I didn’t want to stir anything
up for your family, not knowing the situation behind the lien. I did find out,
though, that Steve Rogers has passed away.”

Josh nodded. “Yeah, I went to his funeral,” he said. “He and
my dad were good friends. I thought he’d want me to be there.”

“Hell, I wanted to be there,” Dale said, appearing behind
Josh. “But you went and killed me, so that kind of prevented it.”

Josh glanced over his shoulder and then turned back to Mary.
“Did you hear something?” he asked.

“Um, no,” Mary lied. “No I didn’t.”

Josh shrugged and glanced back down at the document. “So
what do you need from me?”

“I just need your signature,” she said. “The document
basically states that you and your family will be responsible for any debts or
obligations set forth in the lien.”

“Do you know how much the lien is for?” he asked.

“No, I didn’t pull that paperwork,” she said. “Once again, I
didn’t want to uncover anything that was best left alone. When I first saw the
lien, I didn’t know anything about your father, so I didn’t know what to
think.”

Josh’s head snapped up. “What do you mean by that?”

Once again, Mary tried to read emotions as she spoke. “I
didn’t know he was such an honest man,” she said.

“He was a hard-ass,” Josh replied.
“A
stubborn hard-ass.
But, yes, he was honest.”

“You don’t seem to admire him as much as your siblings did,”
she said.

“Well, when you’re the oldest, you get a different
perspective,” Josh said. “When you’re the oldest, there are obligations that
are assumed from the moment you’re born.
At least when you’re
the oldest in a multi-generational agricultural family.”

“Ah, so your future was decided before you even had a say in
the matter?” Mary asked.

“Course it was,” Dale said. “That farm gave you the house
you lived in and the food you ate.
Nothing wrong with a
legacy.
Should have been grateful for the
opportunity.”

“Yeah, before I was ten my life was all set out before me,”
he said. “Dad would always say things like ‘When Josh takes over the farm’ or
‘When you run the farm, you can do things your own way.’”

“What did you want to do?” Mary asked.

“What I’m doing now,” he said. “I work the financial ends of
things. I help other farmers invest their money, so they have a different kind
of legacy for their kids. Not just back-breaking hard work and an uncertain
future, I help them plan for a future.”

“Nothing wrong with hard work,” Dale muttered. “It was good
enough for me, my dad and his dad before him.”

“Is that why you wanted to sell the land right after your
dad died?” she asked.
“For the future?”

“Or for the money?”
Dale spat.

"Is that what they told you?” Josh asked, standing and
pacing behind his desk, nearly running through his father. “Is that what Jessie
and Abe said?”

“Well, I don’t think they used those exact words,” she
replied.

“Mr. Gartner told me I needed to sell in order to take
advantage of the incentive,” Josh said. “He told me if waited I would lose
millions of dollars.
 
I wasn’t just
thinking about myself, but of Jessie, Abe and Mom. It was a lot of money.”

“That’s a lie,” Dale said, shaking his head slowly. “Gartner
never sold his property. He was on the county board and they were the ones
deciding on allowing the corporation to come in. It would have been a conflict
of interest. He would have had to recuse himself from the voting.”

“But your dad didn’t want the land to be sold,” Mary said.

“Yeah, but my dad wasn’t around anymore to make any of those
decisions,” Josh said. “He wasn’t going to run the farm and I sure wasn’t going
to be the sacrificial goat and run it.”

“How about Abe?”
Dale asked. “He
could have done it.”

“Wasn’t Abe interested?” Mary asked.

“Abe,” Josh closed his eyes and sighed. “Abe was so buried
in guilt that he didn’t leave his room for a week, except for the funeral. He
blamed himself for dad’s death.”

“But it wasn’t Abe’s fault, was it?” Mary asked.

Josh shook his head. “No. It wasn’t Abe fault,” he said
quietly.

Sitting down suddenly, he grabbed a pen and quickly signed
the document. “Okay, you have my signature,” he said, pushing the paper across
the desk to her. “Now, please, get out of my office.”

“I got your text, Mary,” Rosie said as she entered Mary’s
office. “I can’t believe you’ve already met with all of Dale’s kids. So, what
do you think?
 
Did they kill their dad?”

Mary looked up and grinned. Rosie was still wearing the
plastic shawl from the local beauty parlor and her head was covered with blocks
of shiny foil.

“Rosie, what were you doing when you got my text?” she
asked.

“Having my hair done,” she replied, sliding into the seat in
front of Mary’s desk. “It has to process for twenty minutes anyway, so I
figured I’d hurry down and talk to you.”

“Really, Rosie, it could have waited,” Mary chuckled.

“Well, I couldn’t,” she argued. “This is the very first time
I’ve actually hired a ghost investigator.
 
So, what’s up?”

“All of the children were willing to sign the fake document
about the lien,” Mary replied. “But it seems that all of them are not convinced
Dale’s death was an accident.”

“Why didn’t they go to the police?”

“Because they think they’re protecting each other,” Mary
said. “Even Greta was suspicious, but she never told anyone because she didn’t
want to get her children in trouble.”

“So, who did it?” Rosie asked.

Mary shrugged. “I don’t know yet,” she said. “I’m sure it’s
linked with the sale of the land, but I still need a strong motive.”

“They made a lot of money,” Rosie said. “Isn’t that a good
motive?”

“Yes, money’s a good motive,” Mary said. “But does it
outweigh the other variables?”

Sitting back in the chair and adjusting the shawl, so the
back of the chair was protected, Rosie cocked her head slightly, sending all
the foil slips shifting to one side. “What do you mean by outweighing other
variables?”

“Okay, well, if someone offered you a million dollars to
divorce Stanley, what would you say?”

Rosie pondered her response for a moment. “Could I marry him
again, after I got the million?”

Mary laughed. “No, you could never see him again.”

“Then no,” Rosie said with a quick shrug. “I love Stanley
more than a million dollars.”

“And love is one of those variables you have to consider,”
Mary said. “If Dale’s kids loved him, they wouldn’t kill him for money.”

“Did they love him?” Rosie asked.

“Yeah, did they love me?” Dale asked, appearing next to
Rosie.
 
He looked over at her and did a
double-take. “What the hell happened to her?”

“She’s getting her hair done,” Mary laughed.

“What?” Rosie asked.

“Dale just appeared and he wondered about your outfit,” Mary
said.

“She looks like my TV antenna when we were trying to get
better reception,” Dale muttered.

“Mary, you didn’t tell me there would be others at our
meeting,” Rosie complained.

“Rosie, I didn’t know Dale would be here,” Mary said
apologetically. “But since he is here, he can help with the question at
hand.
 
Did they love him,
er
, you?”
 

“Nope, they didn’t,” he said, folding his arms over his
chest. “They didn’t love me at all.”

“Dale doesn’t think they loved him,” Mary said to Rosie. “I
disagree with him. I think they all loved him.”

“So they didn’t kill him?” Rosie asked.

“Well, I’m not willing to say that, yet,” she said, “
because
sometimes you make bad decisions when you’ve got
pressure from other areas.
 
For example,
did Jessie feel pressure from Quinn?
 
Was
there an ‘If you love me you’ll help me close this deal’ moment?
 
Was Josh feeling pressure about his future
and saw this as a way to get out?”

“You still don’t kill someone,” Dale said.
“No matter what you’re feeling.”

“Of course, I agree with you, Dale,” Mary said. “But until I’ve
found more information than I have right now, I can’t give either you or Rosie
a good answer.”

Rosie sighed. “I really thought things would be figured out
faster than this.
 
On television it only
takes those private eyes sixty minutes, with commercials.”

Mary sighed and then thought of something. “I need to change
the subject,” she said, “Before you have to head back to the beauty shop. Do
you remember hearing anything about a ghost in a yearbook when you were in high
school?”

“You mean Dead Erika?” both Rosie and Dale said at the same
time.

“Dead Erika?”
Mary repeated. “Well,
that’s not very nice.”

“Well, she was dead,” Dale said.

“We only called her that because she was dead,” Rosie said.

“How did she die?” Mary asked.

“Hit by a train,” Dale replied.

“She committed suicide at the park,” Rosie said.

“So, no one really knows,” Mary said.

“All I know is that she died during her junior year of high
school, before the pictures were taken and she showed up as a ghost,” Rosie
said.

“Yeah, yearbooks sales that year were off the books,” Dale
added. “They even got requests from folks out of town.
 
Dead Erika put Freeport on the map that
year.”

Rosie looked down at her watch and then jumped up. “Oh, my
time is almost up,” she cried. “I need to get back, or I’ll turn pink.”

She turned, ran out the door and jogged down the sidewalk
towards the beauty parlor.

“If that don’t beat all,” Dale said, slowing fading away. “I
never did understand women.”

Mary looked around her empty office, then stood up, walked
over to the refrigerator and opened the freezer section.
Yep,
she thought,
this is
going to be a two container kind of day.