by Etta Faire
Rosalie looked closer. “Oh I don’t know. If I had to pinpoint a time, I’d say probably early next year if not sooner. Things are going to change for the positive for you as far as your love life goes, that’s for sure…”
I went to the back room while Rosalie continued her reading.
On a whim, I decided to check the answering machine at my house.
Because my house sat secluded at the top of a very steep hill in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t have cell phone coverage at home. So I was forced to use a landline and an answering machine.
I punched in my password to retrieve my calls.
“First unheard message from 219-555-4397,” the automated woman’s voice said.
“Hi. This is Michael Deller. I am not sure why you are digging into this again, but I answered all the investigator’s questions back in the 90s. I gave my statement then, and nothing has changed. I did not kill Agnes Dundle. I didn’t see anything weird that night, and I don’t know who did it. Do not contact me again or I will take action.”
Sitting on the stool in the back, I listened to the first part of the message again, just to jot down the number. Then I hit “141” to disguise my own number before calling him back, in case the “action” he was talking about taking involved a knife and a shower.
I could only hear the college girls squealing in the background as their palms were being read while I listened to the ring tone, fully expecting to get Michael’s voicemail.
To my surprise, he picked up, and I almost didn’t remember what to do when that happened in life. “Hi. Hello there. Michael? It’s Carly Taylor from the investigation agency. Please hear me out. Don’t hang up. No one thinks you did anything,” I said, knowing from firsthand experience that I was dealing with a very unstable person. “I just want to figure out what happened to Agnes. That’s all.”
“Sure,” he said sarcastically. “I know the police thought I killed her back then. And now, y’all are gonna try to frame me again.”
“I don’t work for the police. I was privately hired to figure out Agnes’s murder. Please, if you really cared for Agnes, help us solve the puzzle.”
He paused.
“Do it for Agnes,” I said after the pause got too long. “Unless you really do have something to hide…”
“I don’t.” He sighed and I pictured the man twisting his legs awkwardly in a pair of khakis. “What, exactly, do you want to know? But if it at all sounds like you’re tricking me, and I know when people are tricking me, then I’m hanging up.”
I pulled out the recorder from my purse, closed the door to the backroom, and put the man on speakerphone.
“How did the police try to frame you last time?” I asked.
“They kept bringing me in and asking me the same dumb questions over and over again. I knew why they were doing it, too. I’m not stupid. They were trying to trip me up.”
“What questions were they asking?”
He didn’t answer, which was not surprising. I decided not to pry. It was best not to set him off. “I’ve been talking to a witness from that night. Although she doesn’t think you murdered Agnes, she told me you were the one who brought Agnes the last champagne she ever had. Police believe it was that drink that had been laced with poison.”
“What? Who said that? I didn’t poison anything.”
I kept my voice therapist-calm. “No one is saying you did. But she did say she saw Hank Hanford pouring something into Agnes’s drink. Did you see that?”
“No. But that wouldn’t surprise me. Right after I got Agnes the drink, I left.”
“But before that, you went to Hank Hanford’s office to see for yourself if he was giving Agnes a set of expensive earrings…”
He stuttered over his words. “You sound like the police all over again. So what? So I left Hank a note under the jewelry box. So? It wasn’t even a bad one.”
I did not know about the note. I almost kissed my recorder. This must’ve been the information the police were withholding, what Hank was referring to when he said Michael was off his rocker.
“What did the note say?”
He was silent now.
“You might as well tell me. I’ll just ask Hank or the police, and I’d rather hear your version…” I crossed my fingers and tried not to sound like I was lying.
“All it said was how he ought to be ashamed, and that his wife ought to find out.” Michael continued without me prompting. “But I never saw jewelry cleaner. Never touched it. I would never have poisoned Agnes. I loved her.”
I made my voice extra soft so he wouldn’t go off the deep end and do something rash like hang up or kill his mother. “So the note just said that Hank should be ashamed of himself?”
“Ohmygod, I just told you. Yes.” His voice was tense like he was gritting his teeth. “It said something like, ‘Shame on you, pig. Your wife ought to know that you’re sleeping with Agnes.’ Or something like that. I mean, c’mon. Wouldn’t you have been mad? I was lucky I didn’t get AIDS. That was really big back then. But that was the only thing I was mad about that day.”
Neither of us said anything, so I went on. “I heard that there might have been something else you were mad about. Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you give Agnes a key to your apartment…”
Heavy breathing came from the other end of the phone. I guessed Michael was surprised by how much I knew. I continued, voice almost a whispered monotone now. “But Agnes told you she wasn’t going to move in because you were twenty-eight and still living with roommates in a tiny apartment.”
“That’s not how it happened,” he said, his voice raising into an unstable pitch again. “Whoever you’re getting your information from is lying.”
“Look, Michael. I don’t think you murdered her, but I need more information to figure out who did,” I said, like he wasn’t still high on my list of suspects.
“Well, you’re right about the roommate thing, but I was the one who took the key back and the offer. Me. And if Agnes were still around, I would thank her for helping me see I needed out of that situation. I moved out of that rathole as soon as the lease was up the next year. Moved back in with my parents in Indiana… I know that sounds crazy.”
That was actually the least crazy-sounding thing he’d said, probably because it also sounded familiar. Before I inherited Gate House, I was living in my mother’s basement. I quickly tried to form a connection with this unstable man so he would feel relaxed and let some other things slip. “I know how hard that is,” I chimed in. “I had to move back in with my mother after my divorce. She’s also in Indiana, by the way. Indianapolis, in a townhouse. I had the basement.”
“Oh, that’s bad. I mean, our basement was always pretty cold.”
“Yeah, so was ours, but fortunately, it included this never-ending mold smell, so I barely noticed I was freezing.”
He chuckled. “That’s rough. But at least for me, it was worth it. And Agnes’s death was kind of like the slap in the face I needed to grow up. I stopped buying so many video games and concert tickets, and I worked my butt off. I bought a house in 1999 right before I met my wife. We have two kids now. My oldest is thinking about Landover University next fall. It’s funny. My life would’ve been so different if Agnes had kept that key.”
“And you hadn’t had to kill her,” I thought in my head, but didn’t say out loud.
I continued. “So you were mad the day of Agnes’s death. What did you do after you got her the drink?”
“I didn’t kill her, if that’s what you’re implying. I was mad at her, sure. Geez. Who wouldn’t have been? But I wasn’t even mad enough to break up with her. I left the party as soon as I gave her the drink, and went by Blockbuster. But you know what I picked up? Fried Green Tomatoes. You know what I wanted to pick up?”
“Terminator Two,” I said.
There was silence. “You got a pretty good witness working with you, whoever they are. Anyway, I hated Fried Green Tomatoes. But I knew she wanted t
o see it, so I thought I’d surprise her with it. I called her at work to apologize, and that’s when I found out she’d been rushed to the hospital. I’ve never watched Fried Green Tomatoes since.”
I didn’t point out the fact that that wasn’t saying too much, seeing how he just told me he hated that movie.
He continued. “That’s all I can tell you,” he said, then added. “Don’t call again.”
He hung up before I could ask anything else. I shuffled back into the main part of the store, confused as ever, but sure of one thing. Everyone was guilty.
Rosalie was finishing up with her clients. The girls laughed as they put on their coats and grabbed their keys, chatting away about all the fun things Rosalie had told them would happen in their lives.
There was still a ghost behind them, that same middle-aged man in a Packers baseball cap and jeans who was definitely trying to get my attention by waving frantically and smiling. I rolled my eyes.
“Can I add something,” I said, knowing full well that, once again, I was just about to out myself as the town freak. “I’m only doing this because someone is insisting. You see, I see ghosts.”
All the girls looked over and stopped smiling. They giggled nervously as they zipped up their jackets.
“And Wendy,” I said to the girl who had just received the palm reading. “Your dad is here. He’s wearing a Packers hat and jeans. He’s really trying to get your attention.”
Her face fell and her eye twitched. “My dad? He loved the Packers. He died when I was in high school. A sudden heart attack. My mom found him…”
“On his birthday. He’s telling me all this.”
Her eyes welled up.
I went on. “He doesn’t have anything major to say. He just wants you to know he’s still here for you, Bugaboo, if you ever need him. He never left. But he also wants you to know that he’s not too close. He respects your privacy when you’re partying with your friends and stuff.”
Her voice shook, and the words barely came out right. “How? What? How on earth did you know I was his Bugaboo?” Tears streamed down her face and onto her thick jacket. One of her friends draped an arm along her shoulders.
“You ladies have a true gift. Thank you,” she said to us as she opened the door. “I can’t wait to tell my mom.”
It was a true gift, all right. The kind that kept on giving in the form of extra work because it never turned off or let you have a moment of silence.
But I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Chapter 10
Reindeer games
As soon as I got home, I grabbed my laptop and the articles I’d printed out from the library, and plopped down on my couch. It had been another long day of work, work, work. And here I was, prepared to do more work I wasn’t even getting paid for.
My bare freak tree mocked me from its corner.
“I’ll get to you later,” I said as I pulled open my laptop. “Probably with a chainsaw.”
Jackson appeared, hovering by my side. “Oh my,” he said when he noticed my expression. “Is pretending to be happy bringing you this far down at Christmas?”
I grabbed my soft, comfy throw from off the back of the couch and curled myself into it, looking longingly over at my fireplace with its stack of logs piled neatly in a holder. But even with a starter log, it was too much work. “I’m just not sure about Agnes’s case. I feel like I’m back at square one.”
He tugged on his ghost beard. “You mean because no one has flat-out admitted to murdering Agnes? But you did a good job at Dreamstreet. I loved the way you cornered your suspect.”
I put the article down and threw my ex a look. “Wait a second. You were there the whole time? You could easily have stepped in and caused a ghostly distraction for me, and you didn’t?”
“If I keep doing that for you, how will you ever learn to be a nuisance on your own?”
“I know what’s going on here.” I smiled. “Mrs. Harpton told you she wouldn’t put up your family decorations, huh,” I said, guessing that was why he was being an extra jerk.
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Her note simply said, ‘I don’t do trees.’”
My ex had been in his fifties when he died, twenty-something years my senior. But he never looked it, not even in his ghostly silhouette, and he certainly never acted anywhere near it. He was the most immature person I knew.
I went back to my article. “At least you’re up to speed on Agnes’s case so I don’t have to do more work to get you there. What do you think about it?”
“I don’t think it matters. Agnes wanted your help to figure out which of her boyfriends was her soulmate. And once she hears what they’re like today, she won’t be able to consider either of them to be in the running now.” He hover-sat on the couch next to me, and stared at his ghostly-fading fingernails. “So sorry to hear your made-for-TV movie has taken this sad turn.”
“Agnes may not get a boyfriend out of this,” I said. “But she is going to find out who her murderer was. I need to go back.”
“And do another channeling?”
“If Michael put jewelry cleaner in the champagne bottle, Hank might not have known he was poisoning Agnes’s drink. Or, Hank might have been mad about the letter Michael left for him under the jewelry box. Thinking Michael was going to tell his wife, he might’ve poisoned his girlfriend.”
“So, you’re assuming the poison was in the champagne bottle.”
“I’m not one-hundred-percent sure, no. But I can’t rule it out without going back and paying attention to different details. If I notice Hank drinking from the bottle, I’ll know it wasn’t poison. I also want to smell the drink when the time comes. I didn’t know before that’s how Agnes was getting poisoned. I’m definitely going to be better prepared this time around.”
“Better prepared for what?” Agnes said, appearing on the settee.
Rosalie called me the next morning as I was attempting to make my famous sunny-side-up eggs, which were famous for ending up as scrambled.
I knew why she was calling.
“Got a complimentary ticket in the mail today to the Victorian wingding,” she said. Her voice cold and suspicious.
“See? I told you that was going to happen.”
“I know it was you. There was no return address and no stamp. Just an envelope with a ticket that had been stuffed in with the rest of the junk mail.”
I waited until the egg yolk had a little bit of film over it and the whites looked solid. I flipped the egg, and it flopped out all over the pan. I chopped it up with my spatula and decided on scrambled again.
“Well, are you going?” I asked without confirming her suspicions.
“I guess. But I’m going to hate it.”
“So am I. I prefer a modern Christmas,” I said, loudly so my ghost of an ex might hear. “I’m so glad to have someone to hate traditional Victorian with.”
Right after breakfast, I sat on the couch and snuggled into my throw blanket.
“You ready, Agnes?”
“I guess,” she said. Her voice was weak and her coloring was almost nonexistent as she faded into the wallpaper of my living room. I could tell she was barely up for this. But I only needed to see the last part of the party. Twenty minutes, half-an-hour, tops. I hoped her energy would hold up that long.
But I didn’t think lack of energy was what was really bringing her down right now.
Last night, I told her all about the suspects I visited, and how they were doing today, 25 years later.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I guess I knew they would’ve moved on with their lives,” she said, tugging on one of her 90s permed curls. “That was nice to hear about Nancy changing Dreamstreet, how Hank stopped drinking, and how Michael got his act together.”
“They changed because you changed them, Agnes. That was you. Your life, your death. You had a profound effect in your short time. On everyone. Now, let’s figure out which one of these good people needs to be nailed
for your murder.”
She half-smiled as I sat back into my couch cushions.
I had already explained that this second channeling was going to require my full attention. I wasn’t going to be able to interact as much with her in our shared consciousness as I had before. We would only compare notes afterward.
I took deep breaths and let my living room fade into the noises and smells of 1993 once again.
I knew I’d arrived when I heard a fax machine somewhere in the distance.
“Brought you something,” Michael said, handing me a red, plastic cup that I was assuming was champagne, but no longer felt confident about.
It seemed normal, except that I could tell through the plastic cup that it was lukewarm like it had been sitting out all day. Agnes didn’t take a sip, didn’t even look down into the cup, so I couldn’t confirm that the drink was actually champagne in there yet.
Michael was holding onto Kelly’s arm, his eyes bugged and red. He could barely get his words out through his gritted teeth. “Kelly, please tell Agnes what you just told me.”
The redhead twisted away from his grasp. “Michael asked me if I knew whether you and Hank were sleeping together.”
Agnes set her drink down, and I finally got a look at it. Whatever was in the cup looked like champagne, fizzy and yellowish. Nothing suspicious. But I didn’t really know what champagne laced with jewelry cleaner would have looked like.
While they were talking, I tried to pay attention to the noises going on around us. Another loud popping kind of sizzle came from somewhere in the office, making me realize I’d been hearing that a lot this evening. It was followed by mild applause and “Awwwwws.”
Must’ve been Gerald, making the rounds with his puppy magic trick. So far, his story checked out.
A vein on Michael’s neck throbbed as he talked. “Sure. I went by his office myself. He wasn’t there but the jewelry box was. Of course, I opened it. And…” He paused to shake his head. “Let’s just say they’re not the kind of earrings you give a platonic buddy.” He strutted away, and I could feel the eyes of everyone staring at Agnes. There were only six people left at the potluck table. Agnes, Nancy, the reindeer headband guy and three people I didn’t know.
