The Ghost Detective Books 1-3 Special Boxed Edition: Three Fun Cozy Mysteries With Bonus Holiday Story (The Ghost Detective Collection)

by Jane Hinchey

  “Actually, she might be out at the Kelsh estate,” he said, pocketing the keys and turning to face me, brows drawn low, eyes narrowed. “Isn’t that what your meeting is about? The Kelsh estate? I heard last night that Anita had hired you to catalog the contents?”

  “I’m volunteering.” It was the cover story we’d come up with, and it seems word had got around fast. “I have a couple of days to spare between assignments, and spreadsheets are my thing.”

  “We couldn’t convince you to join the historical society permanently?”

  “Sorry, no. But I’m happy to help on this occasion.” And I realized that I may just have to follow through and catalog the contents of the Kelsh estate for real. “Do you have the address?” I smiled. “I may as well check if Anita’s there. And you’re right, maybe she meant to meet me there all along.” Though it was odd she hadn’t told me that, nor given me the address.

  “Sure. What’s your number, I’ll text it to you?” After exchanging numbers, my phone beeped, and the text message with Dudley Kelsh’s address appeared on my screen.

  “Thanks, Keagan, I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Anytime. Don’t be a stranger.”

  I returned to my car, glancing around for a sign of Ben. I hadn’t seen him since we’d arrived and assumed he’d gone off to explore, but I couldn’t very well call out to him. “Darn it, where are you?” I whispered, climbing into my car and punching Dudley Kelsh’s address into the GPS. Then a movement caught my eye, up in the bell tower. Leaning forward, I peered through the windshield, and there was Ben, valiantly trying to ring the bell. I smothered a laugh as I watched him reach for, and disappear through, the bell time after time. I wondered if I should tell him the mechanism had been removed years ago?

  Shaking my head, I started the car, braced myself, and sure enough, he was in the passenger seat a second later. “Having fun?” I teased.

  “I’ve been doing research.”

  “Oh?” Reversing out of my parking spot, I turned onto Summer Street. The Kelsh estate was on the outskirts of town, a twenty-minute drive tops.

  “Yeah. That some spirits can touch and move objects.”

  I glanced at him as he tried to lay his hand on the dash, only it sank right through. “Where have you been doing this research?”

  “Documentaries. Sometimes I go to the library and check out what the kids are reading, read over their shoulder if it's anything paranormal.”

  “Ewww. Creepy.”

  “They don’t know I’m there. And it’s not like I can check out a book myself. Not that they do that much anymore, anyway. So much of it is electronic.” His pout was real, his bottom lip poking out a good inch.

  “So? What did you discover?” My question distracted him out of his sulk.

  “Pay dirt!” He grinned. “There’s this kid, Alys, and she’s researching the paranormal for a class project, and she’s studying—”

  “Don’t tell me, ghosts.” Rolling to a halt at the end of Summer Street, I checked the GPS and flicked my indicator to turn left onto Sunshine Avenue. Whoever named these streets must have been a massive fan of summer, I thought to myself, half-listening to Ben, half concentrating on where I was going, all the while pondering what Keagan had said about Anita and her husband, Logan. Was her husband’s supposed affair what this was really about? Was the missing necklace a ruse? But she hadn’t even hinted at there being another reason why she’d hired me. She’d had me attend last night’s dinner to meet and question the committee members, her husband hadn’t even been in attendance.

  Spousal investigation was one of the prime reasons a person hired a PI. My PI course had all the statistics, and I knew most of my cases would be proving someone was having an affair or proving they weren’t. In the end, it all boiled down to secrets. Who was keeping them, and why?

  The drive out to the Kelsh estate gave me time to gather my thoughts to a certain degree. To be honest, I wasn’t any closer to finding out who had stolen Anita’s necklace, and why. If it even was stolen. Jewelry theft usually stemmed from greed—steal the jewelry, sell it, pocket the proceeds. Yet Anita’s necklace wasn’t worth much at all. Under a hundred dollars. The diamond itself was of poor quality, the chain was nine carats. Who in their right mind would steal it? I hated to admit it, but Ben just might be right.

  Turning off the highway onto a dirt track, I slowed to a crawl as I navigated the potholes. “Is the Kelsh estate a farm?” Ben asked, gazing out the window at the fields surrounding us.

  “It’s looking that way.” We bounced through a pothole, the car violently twisting one way, then the other, jarring my bones.

  “Easy, Fitz.” Ben tried to clutch the armrests, and I saw his foot pumping for the brake.

  “Relax. It’s fine.” But I eased my foot off the accelerator some more. “If we go much slower, we’ll be stationary.”

  “Maybe I’ll go on ahead,” Ben said through clenched teeth.

  “You’re really giving me a complex about my driving,” I complained, giving him the side-eye.

  “You totaled my car!”

  “It was an accident!”

  Before we could get into another argument about my driving, we rounded the corner, and a house came into view. For some reason, the Kelsh estate sounded fancy in my head. Like… mansion-esque. What lay before me was anything but. A beaten-up old farmhouse, a weatherboard structure on a distinct lean, gutters hanging off, what was once a picket fence now only had a few sections still standing. And amongst it all, junk. Bicycles, wheelbarrows, a bathtub! There was a rusted car body in the front garden, overgrown with grass and weeds. Nearby was an old barn that looked to be in similar, if not worse, shape.

  “This was not what I was expecting,” I said, mouth agape. No wonder Lacey had suggested a skip. The whole place looked like it needed to be bulldozed.

  “Look!” Ben said, “is that Anita’s car?”

  A baby blue hatchback was parked at the side of the house. “Yes, it is.” I pulled up behind it.

  “I think I can see her inside.” Ben pointed toward the side window, and I peered through the grimy glass, just making out a silhouette moving backward and forwards. Climbing out of the car, I picked my way around rubble, weeds, and debris to the front door, calling out as I went, “Anita? It’s me, Audrey. I’m so sorry I’m late, I thought we were meant to meet at your house, it’s taken a bit of time for me to track you down.”

  “Audrey, thank goodness!” Anita called back. “I’m having trouble with the door.”

  “Oh? Is it stuck?” I wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and turned. It was stiff but not stuck. Pushing the door open, I stepped inside. Anita had been busy. The front room was mostly cleared out, just an old sofa and coffee table remained, and a bunch of cardboard boxes stacked against one wall.

  “Eeew. What’s that smell?” I waved my hand in front of my nose. Whatever it was, it was gross.

  “That’d be the kitchen.” Anita appeared in the doorway, wringing her hands. “Dudley wasn’t much on cleaning. Or throwing out the trash.”

  “Everything okay?” She looked stressed and pale.

  “Oh, yes, everything is fine. I just couldn’t get the door open, and I think I panicked.”

  “Ummm. Audrey?” Ben, who’d stayed outside to check out the rusted car, now stepped through the door.

  “Oh, my!” Anita gasped, hand to her chest. “Who’s this?”

  “What?” I looked from Ben to Anita and back again. “You can see him?”

  “Of course, I can see him. He’s standing right there!” She pointed at Ben, who looked at me. My mouth dropped open. If she could see Ben, that meant that she could either see ghosts too or…

  “I think she’s dead,” Ben mouthed at me. I had a sinking feeling he was right. She had the same pale appearance Ben had. Washed out. No longer living, breathing, vibrant color.

  “How long have you been here, Anita?” I asked, crossing to her side, reaching out an arm to wrap around her s
houlders, only that familiar icy prickle bathed my skin where we touched. I dropped my arm. She was incorporeal.

  “Errr.” She chewed her lip. “I’m a bit fuzzy today, to be honest.”

  “That’s okay.” I soothed. “We’ll work it out.” Anita Finley was dead and didn’t know it. I stepped around her and peered into the kitchen, covering my nose and mouth with my elbow against the stench. The rubbish was ankle-deep, and I thought I saw a rodent dart across a filthy countertop. Thankfully, Anita’s body was not in the kitchen, so I reached in and tugged the door closed, hoping to lock most of the foul smell in.

  “What are you working on?” I asked, heading further into the house.

  “Oh, I’ve been up in the attic.” She followed me. “We found that painting up there, the one Keagan is restoring, and I wondered if there was anything else salvageable up there. I hate to admit it, but I think Lacey was right. We’re better off hiring a rubbish removal firm.”

  I approached the retractable ladder in the hallway. “Tell me about the painting.” I was hoping to distract her, my heart rate picking up a notch as I climbed the ladder to the attic, bracing myself to the fact that I was most likely about to find Anita’s body.

  “It was just leaning up against a wall up here, covered in dust and cobwebs. It was of a lady playing the piano. Another lady was singing, and a man was sitting watching them both.”

  “Odd that it was up in the attic and not hanging on a wall,” I muttered, heaving myself up the last rung. There was a battery-operated lamp standing on the floor next to the body of Anita Finley.

  “Damn,” I whispered, then over my shoulder, “Ben!”

  “On it.” He appeared by my side in an instant.

  “Oh, my goodness!” Anita cried. “Who’s that, what’s happened?” She rushed forward, then skidded to a halt, hands to her mouth, eyes round with horror.

  “Anita, I’m so sorry. There’s no easy way to say this. I’m afraid you’re dead.” I grimaced and shot a look to Ben, who had been examining Anita’s body but now straightened and crossed to her ghost.

  “We haven’t been properly introduced,” he said, placing a comforting arm around her shoulders and turning her away from the corpse on the floor. “My name is Ben Delaney, and I’m a ghost.”

  As Ben led her away, filling her in on his existence in the spiritual world, I knelt by her body. Her face was swollen, the skin flushed, blotchy and red. One arm was thrown out to the side and a few inches from her fingers a half-eaten noodle cup. Nearby sat a plastic container with the lid sealed. Picking it up, I pried open one corner and peeked inside. More noodle cups.

  “Anita, were these left-overs from last night?” I called. At least Anita hadn’t reacted like the last ghost client. There was no screaming, wailing, or tears from Anita Finley.

  “Yes. The chicken noodle cups Lacey made.” She crossed back to me, stood dispassionately over her own body, and tapped her chin with a finger. “I think I had an allergic reaction,” she said, pointing at her face. “That swelling, and the blotchy skin? Typical signs. But why didn’t I get my EpiPen out? I would have felt the reaction coming on, there’s enough time to stop it.”

  “Where would your EpiPen be?” Ben asked.

  She pointed to her purse. “In there. I always have it with me. Always. Although I wonder what triggered it? I know there’s no seafood in Lacey’s noodle cups.”

  Lifting the container, I took a sniff. Ben and Anita watched me expectantly. “Nope, I can’t smell any seafood,” I told them. “I wonder if you developed another allergy? Something new? Something different? A mold spore or dust mite or something? This place is teeming with pathogens, and if you’re sensitive to that type of thing, it wouldn’t be a stretch that you could develop an unexpected allergic reaction.”

  “Yes. You could be right.” Anita crossed her arms over her chest. “The air in this house was making me cough.” Then she turned her attention to Ben. “Is this why I couldn’t open the door?”

  He nodded. “Yep. Good news and bad news. The bad news is you can no longer touch things. Your hand will pass right through. Good news is, most of the time, you don’t need to. Want to open a door? Just walk right through.” He demonstrated by walking through the wall of the house to stand in midair outside the cracked attic window.

  “Ben,” I warned. Him doing that sort of thing freaked me out. He grinned and stepped back inside. “Audrey doesn’t like me hovering in the air. Or walking around in her car.”

  “How come she can see you? Us?” Anita asked.

  “Good question,” Ben replied. “We think it was something to do with when I died. A woman practicing witchcraft tried to save me, and she was partway through the spell when I passed.”

  “In that case, why can’t everyone see you?”

  “Because I was thinking about Audrey at the time I died. And somehow, my spirit became attached to her.”

  “Oh! Are you two…?”

  “No, we’re just friends. It took me a while to recall the actual dying part. But I remember a thought crossing my mind that Fitz would be mad as hell at me for dying. And then my cat, Thor, turned up, and both he and Audrey were my last conscious thought when I took my final breath.”

  My eyes misted at the memory. Despite having ghost Ben, I still mourned the death of my friend and hearing him recount it now caused a lump in my throat. Desperate for a distraction, I picked up Anita’s bag and rummaged inside. She said she kept an EpiPen with her at all times, yet I couldn’t see one in her bag.

  “Anita? You sure your EpiPen was in here? You didn’t switch it to an evening purse or something for last night’s dinner?”

  “No,” she snorted. “I’m not that fancy. I only have one purse. That one.” She pointed to the navy-blue tote I was holding. “It has to be in there.”

  “Must be buried at the bottom.” I crawled a few feet away and upended the contents of the bag onto the floor. Out clattered an e-reader, phone, purse, lip balm—several, a hairbrush, tissues, a diary organizer that was bulging at the seams, a notebook, nearly a dozen pens, reading glasses and sunglasses. But no EpiPen.

  “Maybe she’s lying on it?” Ben suggested. “Like she said, she’d have recognized the signs and would have attempted to give herself the shot.”

  “True.” I crawled back to Anita’s body, placed a hand against her hip and one against her shoulder, and attempted to roll her, but of course, she was a dead weight. “Urgh,” I grunted. “Harder than it looks.”

  “Does it really matter?” Anita asked. “Either way, I’m still dead.”

  “True,” I replied, still trying to roll her enough to see if she was lying on the EpiPen. “But, we have to rule out foul play.”

  “Foul play?” Her voice rose. “You suspect foul play?”

  “Not necessarily,” Ben reassured her. “But any unexpected death should be investigated.”

  “Right. Yes. Of course.” Her head was nodding up and down in understanding, but her hands were busy clasping and unclasping, revealing her agitation. I glanced at Ben. “Maybe you should wait outside?” I suggested. “I’m going to call the police, and then I’ll join you.”

  “Good idea.”

  I waited until they’d both silently descended the ladder, lips twitching that they went through the motions for my benefit, then returned to my attempts of moving Anita’s body. I’d worked out if I rolled her toward me, rather than trying to push her away, I could move her. And despite that victory, still no EpiPen.

  5

  After putting in a call to the Firefly Bay Police Department, I followed my instincts. And my instincts told me Anita Finley was murdered. My best guess? The noodle cups were contaminated with seafood, and the perpetrator had stolen her EpiPen. With my spidey senses tingling, I hurried downstairs. I remembered seeing a pair of rubber gloves on the coffee table in the living room. I only had a few minutes to go through Anita’s belongings before the police arrived and took everything into evidence. That’s if they even tre
ated her death as murder.

  Donning the gloves, I scrambled back up the attic ladder and made my way to the contents of Anita’s bag. Opening the diary planner, I flicked through the pages. There was an entry for last night’s dinner, another this morning that said Kelsh. No mention of our meeting. I snapped a photo of the week’s entries, then turned my attention to the notebook. It appeared to be notes on the Kelsh estate, a rough catalog of Anita’s findings.

  “Interesting…” I lifted the notebook to the light, peering at the spiral binding. A page had been torn out, the tattered stubs caught in the wire. I painstakingly photographed each page and had just set the notebook down when I heard sirens in the distance. I hurriedly took photos of the attic, Anita’s body, anything, and everything was memorialized on my phone. I’d sift through it all later. Finally, I broke off a piece of the noodle cup resting in her palm and wrapped it in a tissue.

  Hurrying down the ladder, I tossed the gloves back on the coffee table and slid my phone into my back pocket before opening the front door and crossing to my car, casually placing the wadded up tissue with the remnants of noodle cup into the glove box before returning to the porch to wait for the police car that was making its way down the rough track. The siren had been killed, but the lights still flashed, strobing in red and blue against the house as it came to a stop behind mine and Anita’s cars. Behind the wheel, Sergeant Dwight Clements, in the passenger seat, Officer Ian Mills.

  I bit my tongue to keep from groaning. As far as I was concerned, they were two of the most incompetent members of the Firefly Bay police force. Mills especially has made my life miserable, having taken an apparent dislike to me. He’d taken to pulling me over for fake infringements. I was convinced he’d intentionally busted out my tail light just so he could book me for it. But Galloway had assured me he was on top of it, that his secret investigation into Mills and Clements, plus others, was well underway. It wouldn’t be long before his case would blow the corruption wide open and we’d be rid of the bad apples. It couldn’t happen soon enough.