What's a Ghoul to Do? (25 page)

She didn't answer my question, and I was about to push the point when Steven said, "You were telling us earlier about this booted gin and the deed to this property?"

"Ah, yes," Mirabelle said, taking a seat on the love seat directly across from us. "I don't know the full details of the bargain my mom and your granddad struck back in the day, because it was before I was born. But by the time I was five I was helping Mom with the sieves hidden in the beehives. Everyone in town thought she was scratching out her living making honey and selling it at the local markets, when in fact that was just a cover for the real operation.

"She and Andrew had quite the business. She'd make the gin, and maybe a little whiskey too; then in the middle of the night she and I would carry these big jars with honey labels through the forest, following a path that led to a tree not far from that big house Andrew had."

"How long did this go on for?" Steven said.

"Until she died in nineteen seventy-four. I had just turned seventeen then. In fact, I think it was a year or two before you showed up," Mirabelle said, giving him a little wave of her hand.

"You knew about me?"

"Sure did. Your grandfather talked about you all the time."

"He used to visit you, then?" Steven said, and I noticed how soft his voice had become.

"Couple times a week. He'd come through the woods and place flowers on Mom's grave, stay for tea, then leave. His visits got shorter and more sporadic as the years went by, but every once in a while I'd see him up there, placing flowers on her grave, and I knew he still cared."

Again I felt a tug in my solar plexus and I got the oddest thought. It sounded like,
Tell about the ball…
. In my mind's eye I saw a Christmas tree. I looked at Mirabelle and asked, "What's the deal with the Christmas ball?" thinking perhaps she had gotten a special present as a child for Christmas and this was some fond memory her mother wanted Mirabelle to talk about.

Mirabelle's reaction was unexpected. She looked at me as if I'd said something so offensive that I deserved to be slapped. It was a moment before she said, "So, you've heard about how she died?"

I shook my head and said, "No. I'm sorry; perhaps I should explain. I'm a psychic medium, and right now your mother is behind you in that hallway asking me to have you talk about some sort of ball that has to do with Christmas."

I had to give Mirabelle credit. She seemed to take my profession in stride, because she nodded at my explanation and said, "Andrew threw a big party at Christmas in nineteen seventy-four and invited my mother and me. I wasn't feeling well, and decided to skip it. Mom almost stayed home too, but I insisted she go. She'd been so excited by the invitation, and she'd bought herself a special dress to wear. I remember how beautiful she looked standing in the doorway right before she left. She blew me a kiss and that was the last time I ever saw her."

"What happened?" I asked.

"The morning after the party the sheriff was at my door saying there'd been a terrible accident, and Mom had fallen down the stairs at the Sable lodge. Someone said they saw her heel catch on the top stair, and there was nothing anyone could do for her. Her neck had been snapped and she'd died instantly."

At that moment something pushed me hard from behind and I fell off the couch and onto the coffee table in front of me. Steven leaned forward and grabbed me under the shoulder, "M.J.? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," I said, completely embarrassed. "I don't know what happened." I knew that the push had come from Maureen. Sitting back on the couch, I straightened my shirt and motioned for Mirabelle to continue.

"That's the end of it," she said sadly. "Mom died and a few weeks later Andrew came here and said that the house now belonged to me. He explained that Mom and he had struck a bargain many years before that made the house and twelve acres hers as payment for services rendered."

"So, she supplied him with gin; he resold it and paid her with land," I said.

"Yes."

"What was between your mother and my grandfather?" Steven asked. "Why is her picture in his house?"

Mirabelle blushed slightly and fussed with her napkin. "They had a long and secret romance," she said.

Curious, I asked, "Why was it so secret?"

"Because Andrew was married. His wife often stayed in Boston—word had it she didn't like it up here. Andrew would go hunting here on the weekends, and Mom would head over to his place. They broke up only once, and that was when she got tired of waiting for Andrew to divorce his wife, so she took up with my dad and married him. I was born a year later, and Dad left when I was two. From that point forward until she fell down the staircase, my mother and Andrew had a regular thing. To this day I'm convinced she was the love of his life."

"So, your parents divorced," Steven said, more statement than question.

"No," Mirabelle replied. "My mother was a devout Catholic. She thought it was okay for Andrew to divorce, but it wasn't a choice she was willing to make."

Turning to Steven I asked, "When did your grandmother die?"

“The late eighties. I never liked her."

"She was a bitter woman," Mirabelle said, then caught herself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to insult your family."

"Do not worry over it," Steven was quick to say. "It was common knowledge."

Mirabelle smiled and gave Steven a nod. Then she glanced up at the clock and said, "I really do have to get a move on. The bees need some attention before it gets too late in the day. Come by anytime and we can chat again," she offered.

"As long as you don't greet us with the gun," Steven kidded.

Mirabelle giggled. "Promise." She showed us to the door.

We made our way back up the hill, and Steven asked me, "What happened in there when you fell forward?"

"Maureen pushed me."

"Pardon?"

"Maureen gave me a shove," I said, giving him a direct look that said I wasn't kidding.

"Why?"

"I don't know, but now we know who pushed Gilley down the stairs, and I'm guessing we know that Maria didn't trip on her little tumble either. Maureen's intent on pushing people."

"So she really could have pushed my grandfather off the roof," Steven said.

I considered that before answering him. "I know that it's possible, Steven, but in my gut I just can't see it happening that way. When Mirabelle was talking about Andrew and Maureen, there was something in Maureen's energy that told me she loved Andrew very much. I can't see her murdering him."

"Then why all this pushing?" he asked me.

"I think she's trying to tell us something about what happened the night she died. I don't think her heel caught. I think she was pushed, and she's reenacting what happened to her." Steven looked at me thoughtfully, and just as he was about to speak, my cell phone bleeped.

"I've got dirt," Gilley said when I picked up the line.

"Dish," I said.

"I got a hit on your ghost Maureen, whose last name is Emerson. She owned some property smack-dab in the middle of the Sable land."

"That's old news," I said. "Steven and I discovered that, like, an hour ago."

Gilley made a snarfing noise on the line.
"Hello!"
he said. "Could you have told me?"

"Sorry, we were sort of in the middle of things. But let me ask you, did you happen to get any info on how she died?"

"Hang on," Gilley said, and I could hear him typing into the computer. "Her obit says she fell down a set of stairs on Christmas Eve. Wait a sec," he said, and I heard more typing. "Here we go, local paper has an online archive, thank God. Most of these small towns aren't that sophisticated. Maureen Emerson, longtime Uphamshire resident… blah, blah, blah . .. yadda, yadda… found it. Says she was attending the Andrew Sable Christmas Eve ball when her heel caught on the top stair and she took a tumble, snapping her neck and killing her instantly, according to an eyewitness."

"Does it say who the eyewitness was?"

There was a pause on Gilley's end as he skimmed the rest of the article. "Nope, just says it was one of the attendees."

I scowled. Why weren't things ever easy? "Gil, here's the drill. I think that Maureen was the ghost that pushed you down the stairs the other day, but I don't think she meant to hurt you. I think she was reliving the night she died. I think someone pushed her down the steps and then claimed to have seen her heel catch on the stair."

"That's a lot of assumptions, M.J."

"Yeah," I said. "But my gut says I'm right. Can you dig a little deeper into Maureen's death? Maybe find someone who might have been at that party that night?"

"M.J., that was over thirty years ago!"

"I know it's a long shot, Gil, but if anyone is going to work a little magic on that end of it, it's you."

"Just don't expect a miracle," he grumbled.

"Also," I continued, "I need you to look into the background of Maureen's daughter, Mirabelle. I think she's clean, but the fact that she knows her way through the woods to the secret entrance of the Sable house has me a little bothered."

"What secret entrance?"

I'd forgotten that I hadn't filled Gilley in on the tunnel cave-in, and I didn't want to open up that can of worms right now. "Nothing, just work on both of those, would ya?"

"Along with working on this Roger guy, too, I suppose."

"Yep. Along with that," I said, smiling. I knew I was giving Gilley a lot of work, but it was his forte, after all.

I filled Steven in on Gilley's end of the conversation as we made our way back to the lodge through the woods. When we got home we were both famished, so we drove into town to eat. When we arrived at the local diner, Steven hesitated as we were about to walk in, looking through the window of the eatery. "What's up?" I asked.

"My father is in there."

"You're kidding," I said, looking through the window myself. "Did you want to go somewhere else?"

"No, this will be fine. Come on."

We headed inside, and several people looked up as we walked through the door. Steven's father wasn't one of them, and it was obvious that he was so engrossed in his conversation with another man that unless we made a point to call attention to ourselves, he would hardly notice our presence. Steven took advantage of this and walked around the back of the restaurant, then circled back and took a seat directly behind his father's booth.

My eyes widened and I shook my head at his boldness, but incredibly, his father took no notice of us.

"If the permits are signed within the next few months, how quickly can we break ground?" we heard Steven Senior say.

"We'll be able to move fast," the other man said. "I'd say by the following week, as long as there's no holdup at the county office."

"I'm working on making sure there are no unexpected delays," Steven Senior said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

"I'll bet you are, Dr. Sable," the man said with a dry laugh. "The only matter left is gaining the deeds for phase two. You know what'll happen if—"

"Why don't you let me worry about that, Jim," Steven Senior interrupted. "Your focus should remain on the job at hand."

"Yes, Dr. Sable," the man said quickly. "I didn't mean to imply—"

"Of course you didn't," Steven Senior said as his cell phone chirped. I peeked over the top of my menu as he answered it curtly with, "Did you get it?" There was a pause, then, "Good. Meet me in the lobby this evening," and he hung up the phone. "Shall we go?" he said to his acquaintance as he stood up from the table and threw several bills down.

Just then our waitress came over and began talking about the specials, so any further conversation Steven and I could have heard was drowned out. With regret I watched the two men leave the diner.

After we'd placed our order I said, "Sounds like Daddy is working on a major project."

"Mmmmm," Steven said thoughtfully. "My father has always thought himself important."

"Seems like he's got some sort of construction project here in town."

"Curious, don't you think?" Steven said to me. "He's never been a very caring man, and yet he's been looking in on Willis. His profession is in medicine, yet he's now working on a construction project."

I cocked my head sideways. "You think he's up to something."

"Yes."

"Could be a coincidence," I suggested. "Maybe while he was up here checking on his old friend Willis, someone approached him about investing in a project that was too good to pass up?"

Steven seemed to consider that for a moment. "I just can't see that logic," he finally said. "My father has never cared about anyone but himself. This is why he got into trouble with the medical board three years ago."

"Your father had trouble with the medical board?"

"His license was suspended for … how do you say moving things in your favor?"

"Manipulating?"

"Yes, for manipulation of the results of a medical trial he was conducting."

"So tell me about the relationship between your father and your grandfather," I said. I was curious about this whole Sable family dynamic. "How did the two of them get along before you came around?"

Steven twirled his fork as he said, "My grandfather told me that when he was a boy, he dreamed of going to medical school and becoming a doctor. His father, however, would have none of it, and pushed my grandfather to take over the family business, mostly timber and mining. When my grandfather had a son, he pushed him to fulfill the dream he never could. But my father flunked out of medical school twice before finally graduating."

The waitress interrupted our conversation when she arrived with our lunch. After she'd gone Steven continued, "So my father graduates, but doesn't do anything with his training. Instead, he goes to South America and becomes a … eh … playing boy?"

"He becomes a playboy," I supplied.

"Yes, that too, and he finally comes to Argentina, where he meets my mother and begins a long affair with her. When he gets back to the United States, my grandfather is so furious with his behavior that he will not give him any more money. He advises him to use his medical training to earn his way in the world."