by H. P. Bayne
Sully accepted it, took a quick look, then tucked it away in his jacket pocket.
“One more thing, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Was there an autopsy?”
Hank shook his head. “No. For what purpose? Nothing unusual about someone her age passing away.”
“Did you attend the funeral?”
Another head shake. “No funeral. She expressly stated in her will she didn’t want one. She asked one thing only: to be buried on her property. There’s a family plot there, east of the house in a wooded area. Come to think of it, I’m not sure the Wynnes know about it. Sadly, we couldn’t accede to that, as the cemetery’s not maintained well enough to manage it with a full casket. Oh, and she wanted one other thing, which was to be buried in the dress she selected.”
The muscles in Sully’s back stiffened, and he resisted the urge to sit up straight. “What dress was that?”
Hank wrinkled his nose. “Horrible black thing, it was. Suited her in a way. Even in death, no one would be able to see her. The dress came with a long, black veil.”
5
Sully held back on revealing to Hank the full extent of what he’d witnessed at the house. The lawyer had made it clear he didn’t buy into the world of ghosts, and anyway, a good investigator played certain cards close to the chest.
He left Hank’s office a few minutes later and made his way back to his vehicle. He’d just settled in behind the wheel when his cellphone rang.
A photo of Dez’s beaming face showed on the caller ID screen. Sully clicked the talk button and put the phone on speaker. “Hey, D. How’s the drive?”
“Starting raining an hour ago, and then we got lost trying to find the fort.”
Sully grinned. “You get there okay?”
“Yeah, finally. It hasn’t changed since we were kids. Hey, quick question. Pax is with us and we forgot to pack his food. They’ve got burgers for sale here, and I wanted to check with you: he okay to eat one?”
Pax, a large, black dog of mixed breed, had been Sully’s before going to stay with Dez and his family. Pax and Dez’s daughter, Kayleigh, had taken to each other, and Sully couldn’t bear to split them up.
Given Pax had been a street dog, surviving by eating anything he could get his teeth into, Sully figured he’d developed an iron stomach before he’d taken him in.
“Yeah, he’s fine with burgers. Only he’s probably going to need more than one. Don’t give him too much bread. It blocks him up.”
“Right,” Dez said. “What are you up to?”
Sully glanced around him. “Right now, sitting in my SUV on the main street of Willow Valley.”
“What are you doing there?”
“Investigation,” Sully said. “Guy came in to see Lachlan, needing some help with something.” He debated holding back on further detail. Dez hated it when Sully tried to handle ghost investigations on his own. As much as Dez dreaded involving himself in the paranormal world, he also knew how caught up Sully could get where ghosts were involved. Unlike the living, the dead didn’t always let Sully simply walk away when situations became too intense. Dez frequently acted as a buffer, inserting himself between Sully and the ghosts when necessary.
“What kind of help?” Dez asked.
Sully chewed at his bottom lip for a moment before answering. He was fine with holding back info, but he couldn’t lie to Dez. “Do you really want to know?”
“Oh, hell. Seriously? Now?”
“Under control. Don’t worry.” All the while knowing worrying was exactly what Dez was best at.
“Don’t worry, my ass,” Dez said. “What’s the deal there?”
“Dez, seriously, it’s handled.”
“Talk to me.”
Sully pinched the bridge of his nose but filled Dez in anyway. Better he know than spend the rest of the day wondering.
“The good news for you is the ghost seems intent on avoiding me, so you’ve got nothing to worry about there,” Sully summed up. “I’m doing a couple witness interviews today, seeing if I can figure out more about this Mildred Wynne and how she died. Once you’re back later, you can help me out with it. For now, go enjoy yourself.”
Dez heaved a breath. “Okay, fine. But do me one favour and stay away from this ghost until I’m around, all right?”
“Like I said, shouldn’t be a problem. Not with this one.”
After ending the call with Dez, Sully made his way to the Calstead residence.
Sully hoped Jax’s dad was home rather than his mother. In his experience, moms tended to be more protective than dads when it came to their sons’ emotional states.
According to Hank, Jax hadn’t just dropped off the groceries and carried on back to town when Mildred hadn’t answered the door to him. He’d gone out of his way to look for her. Having been inside the maze, Sully knew it must have meant a deliberate search on Jax’s part for him to have found the woman in the centre of it.
No doubt the find would have been troubling for a teenage boy, one whom Sully expected was not regularly exposed to death in such a tangible way. Some time had passed since, but not a whole lot. It was possible discussing it—especially once Sully started asking questions suggesting foul play as a cause of death—would dredge up negative emotions.
His heart sank as a woman answered the door. He put on his most polite smile to compensate.
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Calstead?”
“Yes?”
“My name’s Sullivan Gray.” He fished out a business card from his jacket pocket and handed it over. “I’m a private investigator from Kimotan Rapids. My agency has been retained by the Wynne family.”
Polite interest in the woman’s expression faded behind the shades drawing closed behind her eyes. There it was. A mother’s concern.
He pressed on anyway. “I spoke with Hank Fleming, Mildred Wynne’s lawyer. He told me your son used to deliver groceries to her and that he’s the one who found her.”
Mrs. Calstead crossed her arms, a move more protective than obstructive. “Yes, he did. I take it since you’re here, you want to speak with him?”
Sully nodded. “I was hoping to, yes. Is he around?”
“He is, but I don’t want anyone asking him about that day. It was very traumatic. He still has nightmares about finding her. He’s not well, and I don’t want it made worse.”
The folded arms suddenly appeared less protective and more stubborn. He couldn’t blame her, not if Jax was as badly impacted as his mother said.
“Could you keep my card anyway?” he asked. “If you could tell him I stopped by, maybe he’ll be okay to give me a call sometime.”
Thankfully, Mrs. Calstead slipped the card into a pocket rather than handing it back. “Why are you here anyway? What about Mildred’s death has got a PI firm involved?”
Sully debated how much to say. No doubt if Mrs. Calstead knew her son might become a witness in a murder investigation, she’d be even more likely to slam the door in Sully’s face.
“My clients have some questions about the house,” Sully said. “It’s led to a few questions about the manner of Mildred’s death. Her family has questions, and I’d like to answer them if I can.”
“What about the house?”
The question hadn’t been asked by Mrs. Calstead, but by a young male somewhere behind her inside the house. The woman turned in the doorway, and Sully spotted a lean, dark-haired boy in his mid-teens, handsome face marked by acne.
“Just a minute, Jax,” she said.
Jax didn’t seem the “just a minute” sort, as he pushed into the space beside his mother to eye Sully.
“What about the house?” he asked again, meeting Sully’s eye.
“Jax—”
He pushed a little farther forward until he’d shouldered his way fully past Mrs. Calstead. “You mean Mildred’s house?”
Sully tried to ignore Mrs. Calstead’s disapproving expression as he replied to the youth. “Yeah, that one. I’d hoped to ask you about i
t.”
Mrs. Calstead stepped forward as if attempting to overtake Jax. “And I told him you were very upset about what happened and weren’t in a position to answer questions.”
Jax turned his head enough to meet his mother’s eye. He was taller than her so he glared down on the top of her head prior to answering. Sully recognized the signs of an ongoing battle, the kind fought daily between mothers and their teenage sons every day—not quite a man, no longer a boy. In Sully’s case, he’d long since passed into adulthood, and he still engaged in this particular war with his overprotective older brother.
“I want to talk to him,” Jax said. Mirroring his mother’s pose, he crossed his arms as he spoke. They regarded each other for a long moment, leaving Sully to watch awkwardly from the front steps. Feeling like he was encroaching on a private skirmish, he ducked his head to stare at their legs and feet, deciding he’d maintain the view until he received further response from one or the other.
In the end, Jax won out. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
On this, Mrs. Calstead understandably put her foot down. “Nope. House. I want you where I can see you.”
Sully made what efforts he could to play peacemaker. “House sounds fine to me.”
The interior of the property was as classy as the outside, making it clear the Calsteads took great pride in their home.
Once inside, Mrs. Calstead seemed to accept Sully’s temporary presence there, going so far as to offer him a drink.
“I’m fine, Mrs. Calstead, thanks,” he said.
“Abby, please.” And with that final pleasantry, she closed the door to the kitchen behind her, leaving Sully and Jax to speak privately in a sunroom overlooking the backyard.
“I saw you on the net,” Jax said once they were alone. “You see ghosts.”
Chalk up one more person who knew what had once been Sully’s biggest secret.
“You read the news reports, huh?”
“Not at first, but some of the girls at school, they talk about you a lot.” Jax grinned playfully. “I had to look up the competition.”
Sully met the grin with his own. “I’m no competition, believe me. Ten minutes in my company would make most people run the other way.”
Jax honoured the comment with a laugh. “Yeah, can’t see most people going in for that sort of thing. People ever think you’re crazy?”
A loaded question if Sully had ever heard one. “All the time.”
“But you do see them though, right? Ghosts? It’s not made up or anything?”
Sully shook his head slowly. “Nope. Not made up. Sometimes I wish it were.”
“Is that why you’re here? At the Wynne house, I mean? Because of a ghost? Everyone knows the house is haunted. Figured it was only a matter of time before a ghost hunter showed up.”
“I’m not a ghost hunter. I’m a private investigator. But, yeah, I’m here about something paranormal.”
Jax’s smile was triumphant. “Knew it. Can I come?”
“Nope. Sorry. I’m kind of a one-man band with this stuff. I really just wanted to ask you about Mildred, if you don’t mind.”
A shrug. “Sure. What about her?”
“How well did you know her?”
Another shrug. “About as well as anyone did, I guess. She didn’t exactly talk much or anything.”
“Even to you?”
“I just brought her groceries. She’d pay me, and I’d bail.”
“What did she look like?” Sully was hoping for a better response than he’d received from Hank, who had gone no further than “old lady, grey hair, skinny.”
Jax’s answer was far from helpful. “I dunno. Never saw her face.”
This was unexpected. Sully tilted his head as he regarded the teen. “Seriously? How’d you never see her if she paid you for groceries?”
“She’d leave money in a little box on the front step, inside the enclosed porch area. I’d take it and leave the groceries there. She always tipped well too.”
“So what happened the last day?”
A shadow fell over Jax’s features, killing what was left of the smile and slackening the other muscles in his face. “That day sucked.”
“I’m sorry. It must have been a horrible thing to see.”
Jax’s brows lifted with a coming question. “You ever see a dead body?”
Another loaded question. The kid was full of them. “I’ve seen my share—in both body and spirit. It’s not an easy thing.”
Jax nodded, seemingly satisfied. “She always ordered her groceries the day before. That way, I could get the stuff together for her first thing in the morning before it got picked through. We don’t have a lot of stuff in the store, just the basics. Fruit especially goes fast. She didn’t like stuff to be overripe.”
Not exactly the sort of details about Mildred Sully had come here for, but he allowed Jax to ramble a bit. He’d get to the important stuff in his own time.
“Anyway, she needed a bit of a haul that day, nearly sixty bucks’ worth. I paid for it as usual and went to drop it off. Only there was no money in the little box. Never happened before. I didn’t know what to do.”
He paused there. Sully waited, but when nothing else followed, Sully gave him a prod.
“What did you do?”
Jax glanced up, and his eyes widened as they met Sully’s, as if he’d momentarily forgotten he had a visitor. “Oh, uh, well, I rang the doorbell. I know it rang because I could hear it through the door. It’s one of those kinds of chimes you’d expect to hear in a big, old house like that. Kind of creepy.”
“But she didn’t answer,” Sully guessed.
Jax shook his head to confirm Sully’s conclusion. He faced away again, then leaned forward, arms coming to wrap around himself, elbows balanced on knees. They were coming to the root of it now, the part Jax had no doubt tried to block from his memory.
Sully gave him the time he needed. He’d would say it when he was ready.
A few more moments passed before Jax continued, signalling the start with a heavy inhale.
“Like I said, it was weird for her not to leave money for me. I thought maybe something had happened to her. Part of me wanted to just get back into the car and go. Dumb thing, though: I couldn’t figure out what to do with the groceries. I mean, should I take them back to the store, or should I leave them and try to get the money next time I came? I didn’t feel right taking them, because I knew she’d need some of the stuff in there, like flour and milk and chicken and TP and stuff. But I didn’t want to leave it either if she’d gone out, because some of the stuff would go bad sitting there.
“Then I started thinking, what if she’s hurt or something? I didn’t want to leave her if she was. You know? I thought about my grandma and how I’d feel if she fell down and no one helped her.”
Sully smiled. He liked this kid. “You’re a good guy, Jax.”
Jax beamed, but the smile faded as the next thoughts played out across his face.
“I was going to call my mom to come help—she works from home mainly, so I knew she’d be around. But I thought, you know, I’m sixteen. Time to start solving problems on my own, right? And I’d feel stupid if I called my mom all the way there and found out Mildred was just in the backyard or something. I rang the bell again, and when no one answered, I got up the nerve to try the door. It was locked, so I decided to go around the house. Maybe she was back there, or maybe there’d be a way to get inside, at least.
“I put the groceries back in the car in case some animal got into the food while I went around. Sometimes I see foxes and coyotes around there.”
Sully waited patiently as Jax rambled for a few moments about wildlife. He was struggling with what he’d have to say, so Sully left him again to take it at his own time. After some talk of owls and deer and rodents, Jax got back on track.
“I went to the back of the house—you’ve been there, right?”
Sully nodded.
“You’ve seen the maze, th
en?”
Sully nodded again.
Jax made the same head movement in response. “I didn’t really look at it at first. I was focused on the house. I went to the back door—the one off the sunroom—and I tried the knob. It was unlocked, and it opened. I called into the house, but no one answered. I didn’t really want to go in. I mean, it felt weird, the idea of going in there. She was always so anal about privacy. No one ever even saw her. People used to talk about what she must look like. Like, did she have some awful scars on her face, or was she crazy ugly—that kind of thing. I didn’t know what I’d even do if I saw her. And what if she got pissed I went in?”
Jax heaved a breath. A shudder rippled through his body. “That’s when I got a feeling like someone was watching me. So I turned around.”
Another pause, longer than the last. Another shiver, and Jax rubbed at his arms like he was freezing.
“I saw a woman at the entrance to the maze. She was in a long, black dress and her head was covered. A veil or something. It was black too. She looked like the ghost in that horror movie, the one with the ghost lady killing people in that English village, like a hundred years ago. You know the one I mean?”
“No, sorry,” Sully said. “With what I do, I avoid watching horror movies.”
Jax raised his brows. “Yeah, makes sense. Well, don’t watch it. It’s creepy as hell, man. After that day, I’d rather die than watch it again.”
“What was the woman doing?”
“Nothing. Just standing there. That’s part of what made it so damn creepy. She was just standing, like she was watching me.”
“And you approached her?”
“Not at first. I called out. I always thought ghosts were see-through, and this woman looked solid to me. I thought it had to be Mildred. When she didn’t answer me, I figured maybe she was hard of hearing or confused. My other grandma got like that sometimes before she died, like she’d forget who she was and who all of us were. She’d wander off sometimes, and we’d have to go find her. So I walked toward her, thinking maybe I’d have to help her get back inside and put her groceries away for her. If she was really bad, I decided I’d call my mom to help. Some problems, I know I can’t fix by myself.”
