I gave myself a mental high five as I watched Kane make his exit, with his tail between his legs. Even Rebecca was amused.
“So you can speak to the dead?” The woman behind the counter asked.
“Yes. I’m Meredith Good. I used to live here but I left ten years ago. I’m actually opening a ghost hunting PI business next to my grandmother’s bakery, Homemade Delights.”
“I’m familiar with it. Your grandmother is one of a kind. I’m Mindy Kale, the owner of this shop.”
I shook her hand and took a good look around. It actually was pretty impressive and I had no trouble telling her that. Mindy had long brown hair and she definitely gave off a hippy vibe.
“Thank you. So nice of you to say. Some of the townsfolk were a bit apprehensive at first but now they get it. I think.” She laughed.
I laughed right back. “I’m actually here to ask about a group you started. Keep Silver Bells Green?”
“Oh yes, that’s very near and dear to my heart. In fact, it’s what brought the whole town together. We all wanted to stop that monstrosity Bart Samuel planned on building by the lake.”
“I’ve seen it with my own eyes and it is a monstrosity.”
“There’s not much more to tell. Our main goal is to keep Silver Bells Cove as natural as possible. We don’t want big corporations coming in and destroying our natural landscapes.”
“That’s why I’m here. Bart Samuel was murdered yesterday…”
“Yes, I’ve heard. News like that travels fast in a town this size.”
“So you know I have to ask…do you have any idea who might have been responsible?”
Mindy took a step back. It was clear she no longer liked my line of questioning.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” I quickly tried to recover. “It’s just that his ghost needs to move on and for that to happen I’ll have to solve his murder.”
“Move on to where? Hell itself?” Mindy scoffed.
“Well, that’s not for me to say. I just help them move on to the light. What lies behind it I have no idea.”
“Six o’clock,” Rebecca said.
I looked at her like she was mad but then I remembered our system. I looked behind me and saw Bart Samuel entering the shop. He tried to push things off the shelves as he walked over, but his hands just went through everything.
“This is gonna be great,” I said under my breath.
“What is? What are you looking at?” Mindy wanted to know.
“Bart Samuel’s ghost just entered this shop.”
“You must be joking,” Mindy said. I guess she wasn’t such a believer after all.
“No, he’s here and he doesn’t look happy.”
“Well, you can tell him to get the hell out of my shop. He’s not welcome here. Either when he was alive and certainly not now that he is dead.”
“She definitely killed me,” Bart said as he approached. “I can see it in her eyes.”
“I don’t think that’s a very compelling argument,” I told him. “We need actual evidence.”
I turned toward Mindy, who had a strange look on her face now. She was looking at me like every other skeptic I had come across: like I had lost my mind. “Mindy, please help me. I don’t want to be on this case any longer than I have to. Can’t you just give me a list of names that your little group consisted of? Any extra-passionate members?”
Mindy shook her head. “I’d like you to leave now.”
“Suit yourself. But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.”
The sun was bright as I exited the shop. Rebecca was on my heel while Bart remained in the shop, trying to cause havoc with not much success.
“Tell him to get out here. I have a couple of questions,” I said to Rebecca and she went back inside, not all too happy about her task.
“You really do talk to yourself even when no one’s watching?”
I turned and saw Kane gawking at me from the corner.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him.
“Same as you, trying to solve Bart’s murder. Though it looks like you had as much luck with that hippie as I did. Excuse me for wearing leather.”
I rolled my eyes. “Leather should be a crime. Especially in this heat.”
Kane raised his eyebrows. “Was that a joke?”
“Only if you are.”
He laughed at that, his handsome face lighting up again. It was hard to look away from his perfect smile and then when he looked at me with those deep blue eyes, it was just too much. I looked away.
“I have places to be,” I said.
“I don’t. So I just might keep following you. You actually might be onto something.”
“I’ll call the cops,” I said.
“As if. I was there last night, remember? I don’t think you want to be in the same room with that guy. Especially now that he’s dating your cousin.”
Rebecca was back then with an angry Bart in tow.
“We have to talk,” I said to Bart and just walked away.
“We can do it over drinks,” Kane offered when he caught up to me.
I gave him a strange look. “I wasn’t talking to you.”
“C’mon, I don’t bite. Unless you want me to.” Then he actually winked at me.
“Ugh. Men are such pigs.”
“Hey, that wasn’t very nice,” Bart complained.
“You’re dead. You’re off the hook, buddy.” Inside I was actually thinking that he was probably the biggest pig of them all.
“So what about that drink? I didn’t hear you say no.”
“Who drinks this early in the morning?”
“It’s the breakfast of champions, haven’t you heard?”
A drink I wasn’t going to have, but a conversation with Kane Xavier, P.I., might prove more fruitful than not.
“Fine, just one drink. And a non-alcoholic one at that.”
“Speak for yourself, sweetheart,” Kane said as he caught up to me and the two ghosts.
Apparently, Kane was actually based a few towns over. “I usually do a lot of travel,” he said as he took another sip of his scotch. He actually wasn’t joking about drinking so early. Once I gave him a look, he explained that private eyes lived on a different schedule than everyone else.
“Day is night, night is day, that kind of thing,” he said as a way of explanation.
“Or it could just be alcoholism, plain and simple.”
“I never drink to get drunk,” Kane said seriously. “That would hinder my abilities.”
I laughed at that. “You overheard me saying that last night, too?”
“No. Why?” He genuinely didn’t know what I was talking about.
“So, how many cases have you solved in your time?” I asked him.
“Plenty. This is my first murder, though. I usually leave those to the cops. I mainly deal in cheating spouses and embezzling employees making a run for it. A few missing persons. That kind of thing.”
“I usually help the ghosts move on by making them see that they’re dead. I don’t usually solve any murders, either,” I admitted.
“Cheers,” Kane lifted his glass and I did mine. The two glasses clicked together. Mine was a coke without the rum, of course.
“So you actually do believe you see these…ghosts?” Kane asked.
“Yeah. Why? Did you think I was lying earlier? Did you actually think I was some kind of charlatan?”
“I don’t know what to think. But I do think you’re a little batty.”
“This is incredibly boring,” Bart said. “I can’t even move a matchstick!”
Bart was flying around trying to affect the physical world. If he really put some time into, he might actually be able to do it and then all hell would break loose.
“Stop it, Bart,” I said to him. “You’re too new to be able to affect anything.”
“It never hurts to try. What else am I going to do? Listen to you flirting with this guy for eternity?”
I blush
ed at that. “That’s not what’s happening here.”
“What did he say?” Kane was curious, a twinkle in his eye, or maybe that was just my imagination.
“Nothing worth repeating,” I said under my breath and took another sip of my coke.
“I hate to say it, but he doesn’t seem to know anything,” Rebecca chimed in. She was right. This drinks thing was a bad idea.
“So there’s nothing you can tell me about Bart Samuel that I don’t already know? Can’t you at least show me some of the death threats he received?”
“Maybe,” Kane said reluctantly. “But only under one condition.”
And here we go…
“What is it?”
“I want us to work together.”
“You actually want to work with a ‘kook’ like me?”
Kane shrugged. “I’ve worked with worse.”
“Wow. Thanks, I guess.”
“You’re not actually thinking of working with him?” Rebecca asked. “I mean, he’s kind of a jerk.”
“Yeah, I know he’s a jerk but he has the only lead. Unless I want to ask Jonathan a few questions, which I definitely don’t.”
“You do know I’m sitting right here?” Kane said.
I ignored him. I turned toward Bart who was trying very hard to move a glass of beer and spill it on the guy sitting in front of it.
“What do you think? Should your private eye and I join forces?”
Bart shrugged. “Two is better than one. You might solve my murder faster if you actually shared information.”
“It’s settled,” I said to Kane. “We can work together. I only have one condition: keep things professional.”
Kane laughed. “You have a dirty mind, ghost lady. I don’t think I said anything about asking you out on a date.”
I got up to go. I had enough of Kane for one day.
“Hey! Wait up!” He called after me.
“I’m going back to my office. I still have some cleaning up to do. You can come by with the death threats if you want.”
“They’re over at my room at the local inn. I’ll be there as soon as I can, okay?”
I nodded. “See you later, Kane.”
“See you soon, Meredith.”
I drove back to my office which wasn’t that far away anyway. Homemade Delights was packed with people and I saw the girl Gran was talking about earlier helping out.
I went back to cleaning my office space, trying to visualize what I needed.
The space was super small so it was hard to come up with a nice layout. I would have to settle for functional.
After a while, I heard a knock on the door.
“Kane, it’s about time,” I said as I got up to open the door. Then I turned around and saw who was at the other side of that glass.
It was my cousin Sarah.
“Let me in,” she said. “We have to talk.”
Eight
I let her in, but I immediately turned my back on her and went back to cleaning.
“Meredith, you can’t just ignore me. We have to talk about this.”
“I thought we already did,” I said without looking up at her.
“Let me explain.”
“You already did. You were there, he was there, one thing led to another and here you are together now. I’m very happy for you.”
Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. “You sure aren’t acting like it. In fact, this is how you acted when you thought I stole your favorite Barbie. It turned out Troy had taken it and used it in one of his war games.” Troy was my older brother. He had moved out of Silver Bells as soon as he hit eighteen. Last I heard he was living it up in California, much to our parents’ dismay.
“Really? You’re still bringing the Barbie incident up?”
“You did pull my hair.”
“You pulled mine first!”
Sarah had a sheepish look in her eyes. “Just tell me how you really feel about this. I have to know. I don’t want anything, especially a man, to come between us.”
It was true. Sarah and I were more like sisters than cousins, at least when we were in the same town. But how could I tell her how I really felt when even I wasn’t sure?
“Honestly? I don’t know what to think. I’m still in shock, I guess.”
“Did you think you and Jonathan had a chance of getting back together when you came back into town?”
“Of course not. That was in the past and I have no intention of repeating it.”
“Jonathan told me about the proposal.”
Now that was a surprise. I thought he would never tell anyone for fear of embarrassment.
“Yeah, it was a couple of dates in. He just couldn’t keep it in any longer. He didn’t want there to be any secrets between us. He told me that he loved you once but that he was finally over you. He was ready to move on with his life.”
“And then I come back waltzing into town. I hope it didn’t stir up any old hurts…”
“Honestly? It probably did. But our relationship is strong and Jonathan’s doing well. Plus, he has this whole murder investigation to distract him.”
“Knock, knock,” I heard Kane’s familiar voice as he actually knocked on the glass. I didn’t know whether he was trying to be annoying or if he was just adorable. Probably a little bit of both.
He held a hefty folder in his hand.
“That’s that P.I., right?” Sarah asked, checking Kane out. “He’s kind of cute.”
“If you say so,” I said. “I probably should let him in. We’re working on the case together.”
“Jonathan won’t be happy about that.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t tell him,” I said.
“Fair enough.”
Sarah went over to Homemade Delights, presumably to get a quick bite to eat before going back to the doctor’s office. It was strange seeing her in her nursing scrubs. I guess we were grown-ups after all.
Just as Sarah left, Kane entered and closed the door behind him.
“Everything all right?” He asked as he watched Sarah leave.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You know the whole her dating your ex thing and her being your cousin and all?”
“Shut up and show me what you’ve brought. Let’s focus on the case instead of my messy personal life.”
Kane looked around the office. “It looks like your personal life isn’t the only thing that’s a mess. Where’s a guy supposed to sit?”
“On the floor. I’m still figuring out the furniture situation.”
“I’ve got a van if you need help moving some furniture.”
“That’s…actually really helpful. I might take you up on it.”
“I live to serve,” Kane said as he sat on the floor opposite me. He handed me the thick folder.
I opened it eagerly, happy to have a break from cleaning and talking to my cousin about my ex.
I read one nasty note after another.
“Wow. People here really hated this guy.”
“They’re all anonymous to boot. Who knows, maybe it’s the same person sending all of them. Most of them are either typed or use newspaper letters.”
That much was true. Most of the letters had a distinct message: Leave or Die.
“And Bart didn’t take these very seriously?”
“He was concerned but he also said that he usually got a lot of them wherever he went. Apparently, he wasn’t a very popular guy among the locals.”
“Huh. You can say that again.”
“He hired me to find out who was sending the super threatening ones. Usually, people told him to go away or else, but these specifically threatened his life so he decided it might be a good idea to look into it.”
“Why not go to the police?”
Kane raised his eyebrows. “Most people here hated him, remember? I bet that includes the local law enforcement. He wanted an unbiased person on his case.”
“And look where that got him…”
“Th
at wasn’t very nice. I’m not a bodyguard, you know?”
“Did he have any of those?”
Kane nodded. “There were two big guys always shadowing him. Haven’t seen them since the murder.”
“We should probably track them down. Unless the cops already have.”
“What are you thinking?”
“I just want to get all the info I can. Bart hasn’t been as much help as I’d hoped. He’s more interested in trying to be a poltergeist than moving on.”
“That bad, huh? But can you really blame the guy? I mean, he just died.”
“I guess so. It’s still annoying, though. So does this mean you actually believe I can actually see him?”
Kane shrugged his shoulders. “I believe you believe. You haven’t convinced me one way or the other yet.”
“So you’re actually open to the idea? You’re not a total skeptic?”
“There are more things in heaven and earth…”
“I never took you for a Shakespeare fan.”
“I’m not. I just know the few famous phrases here and there.”
“Good. I was never much of a Shakespeare fan myself.”
We looked through the rest of the notes and letters that poor Bart received.
“Mindy must know something,” I finally said. “She seemed awfully defensive once I asked questions about her little group.”
“I think ‘defensive’ is kind of her natural state of being,” Kane joked.
But this was no joking matter. There was a murderer on the loose in Silver Bells Cove and I was determined to find him or her and bring them to justice. If only to get rid of Bart Samuel once and for all.
“Do you know if the project will go on without him?” I asked Kane.
“I looked into that. It turns out that Bart wasn’t the big man he pretended to be. He actually works for Warwick Crane.”
“Am I supposed to know who that is?”
“He’s only one of the richest men in the world. He’s a billionaire.”
“Oh. Well, I was never that good at following the comings and goings of the living. My life was more focused on the dead.”
“Yeah, maybe that’s the problem,” Kane said carefully.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that you should probably tone it down a little. Especially when you’re out in public. I’ve seen the looks people give you when you’re talking to yourself.”
Ghostly Apparitions (A Ghost Hunter P.I. Mystery Book 1) Page 5
